Two Students Shot at North Philadelphia High School

The shooter, a fellow student, is in police custody.

ByABC News
January 17, 2014, 4:01 PM

Jan. 17 2014— -- Two students were shot at a high school in northern Philadelphia today, police said.

The suspected shooter, a fellow student, has been taken into custody, police said, while authorities search for at least one additional suspect.

A boy and a girl, both 15, were shot by at least one fellow student shortly after 3 p.m. in the gymnasium at Delaware Valley Charter School at 5201 Old York Road in the Olney section of the city, police said.

The high school was reportedly in lockdown while police survey camera footage of the inside of the school.

The unidentified male victim was shot in the arm, while the female victim was grazed in the arm, authorities said, noting that both are in stable condition and expected to recover after being rushed to Albert Einstein Medical Center, a block away from the school.

A friend of the girl who was shot told ABC News Philadelphia station WPVI that she spoke to her moments after the shooting.

"We were just in the bathroom and our friend, she just came in the bathroom saying her arm, her arm," the friend said. "There was just a lot of blood gushing out. She was saying she heard a loud boom in the gym room and she looked up, her and her boyfriend's arm had been hit."

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey confirmed there were seven students inside the gymnasium at the time of the incident, which was caught on the school's surveillance video.

The school was quickly put in lockdown and all students were searched and evacuated one-by-one from the building by 5:30 p.m, police said.

Parents should not go to the school but can pick up their children at Fisher Ave. and Old York Road, police said.

Police said they identified the suspect from video footage and looked up his home address in the school's records system. SWAT officers later captured the teen not far from his home and took him into custody for questioning.

Ramsey said he believes the student in custody is the alleged shooter, but it remains unclear whether the gun went of accidentally. Police are still looking for "one, possibly two" other juveniles, Ramsey said.

The gun has not yet been recovered, and police are currently searching for the weapon in trash cans and near the school. There are metal detectors at the school, and police said they are investigating how the student managed to get the gun into the building.

Delaware Valley Charter School has more than 600 students from grades 9 to 12. The school did not immediately respond to calls from ABC News.

This is the second report of a school shooting within a week. On Tuesday, a seventh-grade student at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, N.M., used a shotgun to fire three times in the gym before classes started, critically injuring an 11-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl.

Mason Campbell, 12, has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for Tuesday's shooting, according to documents filed Wednesday at the Chaves County Fifth Judicial District Court. The charges are third-degree felonies.

Last month, a teenage gunman shot and killed a classmate at a Colorado high school. Karl Pierson, 18, initially arrived at Arapahoe High School on Dec. 13 looking for school librarian Tracy Murphy. He was carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, two Molotov cocktails and 125 rounds of ammunition. Instead, Murphy shot classmate Claire Davis, 17, soon after entering the school before trying and failing to shoot Murphy, police said. Pierson then turned his weapon on himself and was later found dead from a gunshot wound. Davis died on Dec. 21 from her injuries.

The Arapahoe shooting took place on the eve of the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which 27 people -- most of them first-graders -- were killed.