By Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman
Oct 15 (Reuters) – A person with a gun opened fire on Thursday at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, wounding multiple victims, including children, before the assailant was killed, possibly by an armed onlooker, according to police.
CNN and CBS News, citing law enforcement sources, reported that one adult and three children were killed in the violence, but it was not immediately clear whether the shooter was included in that death toll.
CBS News later reported the shooter was 16 years old.
Police in Bend, a city of about 100,000 residents in rural central Oregon, 175 miles (280 km) southeast of Portland, said the first call they received from the 1 p.m. (2000 GMT) incident “indicated that an unknown man had shot into a car” at Silver Rail Elementary School.
Police officers arriving seconds later found that the suspect had been shot dead, possibly by a bystander, police said in a statement.
Sheila Miller, a spokesperson for the Bend Police Department, told reporters investigators had yet to confirm who shot the suspect.
Miller told reporters that at least two victims were transported to a hospital but she was unaware of their condition. The subsequent police statement, posted online, said authorities “have confirmed there were multiple victims,” with at least two taken to hospital, adding, “Children are among the victims.”
Silver Rail Elementary School serves kindergarten through fifth grade, roughly ages 5 to 11, in Bend, situated in the Oregon high desert adjacent to the Deschutes National Forest. It has about 450 students and 40 staff members, Miller said.
US Representative Maxine Dexter, a physician who represents a portion of Portland east of the Willamette River, called the shooting a “devastating day for Oregon.”
“Schools should be places of learning, friendship and joy. It is incumbent on me, and every lawmaker, to do everything we can to ensure our kids are safe,” she said in a statement.
“As we learn more about the tragic event at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend today, we must come together and support each other, neighbor to neighbor, Oregonian to Oregonian. No community should have to live through this day,” Governor Tina Kotek said separately on X.
FBI chief Kash Patel said on X that federal agents were on the scene “assisting our local partners in the investigation” and that his agency would “make every resource they need available.”
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio and Stephen Coates)
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