Six persons shot on first day of classes in Iowa

A student in Iowa shot six people at a high school, one of them died. Then the student took his own life. It happened on the first day back to school after the holidays.

Police found a simple homemade bomb at Perry High School and made it safe.

Five people who were shot were students and one person was a school administrator.

The student who passed away was in the sixth grade, which is for kids who are 11 or 12 years old.

Police received reports of someone shooting a gun at 7:37 in the morning. The first officer got to the place a few minutes later.

Mitch Mortvedt, who works for the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, told reporters that the police found the person they believe is responsible for the shooting. The person had shot themselves.

People from the neighborhood came together at Wiese park on Thursday night. They held candles to remember the victims.

They found out that the suspect is Dylan Butler, who is a 17-year-old student. The police said he had a shotgun and a handgun.

MrMortvedt also said that the suspect had made a lot of posts on social media around the time of the shooting.

MrMortvedt said one person was seriously hurt and four others were not as badly injured.

Earlier today, Sheriff Adam Infante of Dallas County said that because it was early in the day, there were only a few students and teachers in the building, which he believes helped make the situation better.

Lori Meinecke, a teacher at Perry High School, said she heard six or seven gunshots on a local radio station.

The middle school was emptied at around 08:25 in the morning and the high school was emptied at 08:27 in the morning. The two schools are located together on the same campus.

A man named Kevin Shelley talked to a TV station. He said his 15-year-old son had been shot in the hallway, but he would be okay.

Mr Shelley’s son said he was hit in the back and got a scrape on his arm. Then he went into a classroom to hide with his friends.

Investigators from the FBI and ATF came to help. The Iowa police department was in charge of the investigation.

“It’s really, really bad,” said Linda Andorf, who is in charge of the school board for Perry Community School District, according to NBC. This is really gross. “It’s really bad. ”

“Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said at a press conference that it’s hard to understand why something like this happens. She also said that all Iowans support the victims and their families. ”

The White House said that President Joe Biden learned about the shooting and spoke with Governor Reynolds’s office.

Perry is a small town with less than 10,000 people. It’s about 40 miles away from Des Moines, which is the capital of Iowa. It’s in the northwest direction from Des Moines.

The shooting happened just a few days before the Iowa caucuses start on January 15th, which is the beginning of the 2024 Republican primary elections.

The shooting happened while one of the Republican candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy, was supposed to campaign in Perry. The event was called off, and instead, there was a prayer and a talk between Mr Ramaswamy and the people who live nearby.