By Jamie Landers, Michael Williams and Lana Ferguson
A student was taken into custody Monday after a shooting outside Lamar High School killed a peer and injured another, Arlington police said.
Police responded to the shooting, which happened on campus outside a school building, at about 6:55 a.m.School typically starts at 7:35 a.m., and not all students were on campus at the time of the gunfire, according to police.
The suspected shooter is not believed to have entered any school buildings.
According to police, two shots were fired. One boy was struck and taken to the hospital in critical condition, where he later died, Arlington police Chief Al Jones said at a news conference Monday. His identity has not been publicly released.
Another student, a girl, was grazed by a bullet, Jones said. She was taken to the hospital with a non-life-threatening injury, Jones said.
Both students and the suspect are under the age of 17, police said.
According to Jones, the gunman left the school’s campus immediately after firing the weapon. Officers identified and detained him based on witness descriptions. Jones did not say where they found him.
The alleged shooter’s identity was not released because he is a juvenile, but Jones confirmed he is being held at the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center on a capital murder charge. Jones said additional charges are possible pending the investigation’s outcome.
Police have not yet identified a motive, Jones said.
“We need our community’s help to ensure that guns do not end up on school campuses,” Jones said. “We need gun owners to step up … to ensure that they are properly securing their firearms so kids don’t have access to them.”
Lamar High School will remain closed until Wednesday, Arlington ISD Superintendent Marcelo Cavazos said during the news conference, adding that counselors will be available for any student or staff member who needs help.
“Schools deserve to be a safe place for students to learn and to grow every day,” Cavazos said. “Today, we’re heartbroken.”
‘Never thought this would happen to us’
The school was placed on lockdown and it was lifted after police completed a search of the building, according to a tweet from the department about 10:40 a.m.
Stephanie Escamilla, a freshman at Lamar High School, said when she got off the bus Monday morning, she saw a person lying on the ground near the east entrance of the school.
The person was being covered by her principal and a police officer, Escamilla said, but she thought maybe a student passed out. As students were directed into classrooms, Escamilla said there were whispers someone had been shot.
“That’s when it started to feel real,” she said.
Escamilla said students were held in the classrooms for more than two hours before they were ushered onto school buses and taken to the Arlington ISD Athletics Center. In talking to other students on the ride over, Escamilla said the general consensus was they “never thought this would happen to us.”
“It was shocking,” she said. “I was so scared, especially because we didn’t know for a while if he was still on the loose. It was all so unexpected.”
At 11:15 a.m., at least 10 school buses of students arrived at the district’s athletics center on East Division Street — the designated reunification center for parents.
Charmeka Smith, whose 16-year-old son attends Lamar High School, said she was first notified of the lockdown through an alert from the school at 7:19 a.m.
“It was a little overwhelming at first — the not knowing,” Smith said.
Smith said she felt better after she was able to talk to her son over the phone but noted he was “shaken up.” While he didn’t see the shooter, Smith said her son saw a student hit the ground outside the school.
“You can’t even send your kids to school nowadays,” Smith said. “This isn’t something they should have to get used to, but it seems to be that this is our norm.”
Monday was the first day back for Lamar High students after spring break. The school has more than 2,600 students.
Previous shootings, threats
The shooting marked at least the 10th incident of gunfire taking place at or immediately outside a Dallas-Fort Worth school in the post-Columbine era, according to a review of The Dallas Morning News archives.
It came 17 months after a student allegedly opened fire at Timberview High School, about 10 miles away from Lamar High. Timberview is part of Mansfield ISD, which also serves part of Arlington.
Three people were hospitalized after being shot at Timberview. The alleged shooter, Timothy Simpkins, who was 18 at the time, was indicted on charges including attempted murder last year.
Lamar High School has been put on lockdown in the past for gun threats, including in 2013 when a student told an officer another student may have brought a gun to school and in 2015 after suspicious social media posts. No weapons were found on campus in those incidents.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas- at the bottom.
