California authorities are investigating allegations that a 16-year-old boy held in a classroom shooting that wounded a classmate had been suspended from school last year for having a hit list.
Kern County Sheriff?s Department spokesman Ray Pruitt says the reports of the hit list are being looked into as part of the investigation into Thursday?s shooting at Taft Union High School in the city of Taft.
According to members of the California school community, his victim was on the list.
The wounded teen, who classmates said played football last year for the Taft Wildcats, was in critical but stable condition at a Kern County hospital Thursday night. He was expected to undergo surgery on Friday.
The day before the student allegedly brought the gun to school, he talked about killing the victim, according to 17-year-old senior Rebecca Jackson.
?He was joking that he was like gonna kill [the victim] and I thought that it was just a joke because he usually jokes around like that, like telling people that he?s gonna kill them, or skin them alive or something, or eat their puppies,? Jackson told The Bakersfield Californian.
?So I really didn?t take that seriously, and he was going around all day telling people that, you know, he was, he might not be there tomorrow and not to worry about it, he might not be around for a little while,? she said. ?No one actually thought that he would do this.?
Certainly he believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not we don?t know yet
Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood told The Bakersfield Californian ?there?s no question? the suspect had intended targets and that the boy told authorities he had been bullied for over a year. He said the teen went home on Wednesday and plotted revenge.
?He planned the event,? the sheriff said. ?Certainly he believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not we don?t know yet.?
The shooting took place minutes after the school announced new safety procedures due to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting last month, where a gunman killed 20 children and 6 women.
Jackson said that although he was ?really not that bad of a guy,? he often said a lot of things like this.
Trish Montes, who is the suspect?s neighbour, said he was often teased about his short stature. Her son worked at the school and tutored the suspect.
?All I ever heard about him was good things from my son,? Montes told The Associated Press. ?He wasn?t Mr. Popularity, but he was a smart kid. It?s a shame. My kid said he was like a genius.?
I don?t want to shoot you
Katie Wolfe, 16, was sitting at her desk in Taft Union High School on Thursday when the suspect entered her class with a gun.
?The kid came in and he shot and he hit (the student) in the chest,? Wolfe told The Bakersfield Californian, after which students ran to the back of the room and into the storage closet. ?It?s someone that bullied him I guess.?
It was then that science teacher Ryan Heber and campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields tried to talk to him into putting the gun down.
?I don?t want to shoot you,? the suspect said to Heber teacher.
The heroics of these two people goes without saying
?[Heber] was all like, ?We?ve been good to you,?? Wolfe said. ?I feel that Kim did really really good and Mr. Heber, he was scared. He did the best he could for being scared.?
?The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ? They could have just as easily ? tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn?t,? the sheriff said. ?They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun.?
The victim is currently in stable condition at Kern County hospital after coming in with chest and abdominal wounds.
Although there is usually an armed officer at the school, officials say the person was not there because he was snowed in. However, officers appeared at the school 60 seconds after a neighbour reported seeing a boy with a gun walking to school.
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