Three people are dead after a shooting Monday at a Christian school in Wisconsin – including the shooter – and six others were wounded, according to local police.
Police initially said five people were dead after the shooting at Abundant Life Christian school in Madison, the state capital. But they later revised the death toll.
A journalist at CBS’s Chicago affiliate reported that police in Madison described the dead attacker as a “suspected juvenile”.
“This remains an active and ongoing investigation,” Madison police said in a statement. “More information will be released as it is available. We currently need people to avoid the area.”
The school has about 390 students, from kindergarten through high school, according to its website. It sits on a 28-acre campus that hosts students from about 200 families in the Dane county area.
Local TV footage of the scene outside the school showed dozens of police cars, ambulances and fire service vehicles pulling up in the streets outside the school.
America has long had an epidemic of school shootings, on a scale unlike any other country in the world but has struggled with any meaningful efforts to curb the phenomenon, especially when it comes to limiting access to powerful firearms.
Monday’s shooting at Abundant Life Christian was among nearly 490 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are slain or wounded.
Among those cases was the 4 September shooting at Apalachee high school in Winder, Georgia, where four people – two students and two teachers – were slain and seven were injured. A 14-year-old former student was charged in connection with the murders. And so was his father, who was accused by authorities of giving the shooter access to a high-powered rifle and ammunition for it “after receiving sufficient warning that [the teen] would endanger the bodily safety of another”.
