(NewsNation) — Police shot and killed a student outside a Wisconsin middle school Wednesday after receiving a report of someone with a weapon, the state’s attorney general.
“They used deadly force,” said state Attorney General Josh Kaul about the police response outside Mount Horeb Middle School. There’s no word on the identity of the student, who never gained entry to the building. Kaul said no one else was injured.
Authorities described the student as a juvenile male but didn’t provide an age or indicate which of the Mount Horeb District’s schools he attended.
Kaul declined to answer several questions about what happened once police responded, including whether the student had fired a weapon, what type of weapon he had, and whether he tried to get inside the school. Authorities said multiple Mount Horeb officers, wearing body cameras, had fired weapons but they did not say how many.
Police remained on the scene hours afterward while students were kept locked down in buildings late into the afternoon before slowly being released to relatives.
Mount Horeb Area School District Superintendent Steve Salerno suggested that without recent security upgrades, “this could have been a far worse tragedy.” He said students immediately told school staff about seeing someone suspicious outside the building but did not elaborate.
“It’s an experience that you just pray to God every day that you just don’t ever have to enter into,” Salerno told reporters.
For panicked kids and their terrified parents, it was an anxious, unsettling wait. Parents described children hiding in closets, afraid to communicate on cellphones, and one middle schooler said his class initially fled the school gym on in-line skates.
The district used Facebook posts throughout the day to give updates, with the earliest around 11:30 a.m. reporting all district schools were on lockdown. Authorities in Mount Horeb said the “alleged assailant” was the only person harmed, and witnesses described hearing gunshots and seeing dozens of children running.
Several hours later, school buses remained lined up for blocks outside the middle school and police tape surrounded the middle school, the nearby high school and playing fields between both buildings.
“An initial search of the middle school has not yielded additional suspects,” a post around noon said. “As importantly, we have no reports of individuals being harmed, with the exception of the alleged assailant.”
Earlier, the district posted without elaborating that “the threat has been neutralized outside of the building” in Mount Horeb, a small village about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the state capital of Madison.
Jeanne Keller said she heard about five gunshots while in her shop The Quilting Jeanne, just down the block from the middle school.
“It was maybe like pow-pow-pow-pow,” Keller told The Associated Press by phone. “I thought it was fireworks. I went outside and saw all the children running … I probably saw 200 children.”
One middle schooler said his class was in the school gym practicing in-line skating when they heard gunshots.
Schools nationwide have sought ways to prevent mass shootings inside their walls, from physical security measures and active shooter drills to technology including detailed digital maps. Many also rely on teachers and administrators working to detect early signs of student mental health struggles.
Mount Horeb is home to around 7,600 people. It’s the central office of outdoor gear retailer Duluth Trading Company. Mount Horeb markets itself as the “troll capital of the world,” a reference to carvings of trolls stationed throughout its downtown district.
