Colorado school shooting: police investigate revenge motive
Police in Colorado are investigating “revenge” as the motive of a student who opened fire in a Colorado high school, before apparently killing himself.
Karl Pierson, 18, entered Arapahoe High School in a Denver suburb at around midday on Friday, carrying a shotgun.
He is reported to have asked fellow students about the location of a certain teacher, before shooting a 15-year-old girl who was nearby. The girl was said to have been severely wounded in the shooting.
I believe that shooter took his life because he knew that he had been found. Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson
Pierson, said to have been a smart and likeable member of the school’s track team, was found later inside a classroom with an apparently self-inflicted gun wound.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said detectives were investigating “revenge” as a possible motive, but did not elaborate. One student told CNN that Pierson was upset after being kicked off the school’s debate team.
“I believe the shooter knew that deputy sheriffs were immediately about to engage him, and I believe that shooter took his life because he knew that he had been found,” the sheriff told a news conference on Friday.
We haven’t yet done enough to make our communities and our country safer. Barack Obama
Investigators are understood to believe that Pierson acted alone. Authorities said they planned to conduct searches of the suspected gunman’s vehicle, which was left parked at the school, and two homes owned by his parents.
The incident took place the day before the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, in which Adam Lanza killed 20 school children and six workers, before turning the gun on himself.
Barack Obama marked the anniversary in his weekly address, but did not mention the latest shooting incident.
“We haven’t yet done enough to make our communities and our country safer,” President Obama said. “We have to do more to keep dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun so easily. We have to do more to heal troubled minds.”
Arapahoe is also just eight miles from Columbine High School, site of the 1999 massacre in which two students killed twelve classmates and a teacher.