A 17-year-old opened fire at a small-town Iowa high school on the first day of school after the winter break, killing a Grade 6 student and wounding five others as students barricaded in offices and fled in panic.
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Mitch Mortvedt, an assistant director with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said an active shooter was reported at 7:37 a.m. and officers arrived minutes later to find students and faculty either sheltering in place or fleeing the school.
Mortvedt said officers entered the school to find multiple people with gunshot wounds and then “quickly found what appeared to be the shooter with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The suspected shooter has been identified as Dylan Butler, a student at the school.
Butler, Mortvedt said, was armed with a pump-action shotgun and small calibre handgun.
An officer also found an improvised explosive device during a search of the school, he said, but the state’s fire marshal and members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “rendered the device safe.”
Four of the wounded were students and one was a school administrator, according to authorities.
Three gunshot victims were taken by ambulance to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, a spokesperson for its health system said.
Other patients were transported to a second hospital in Des Moines, a spokesperson for MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center confirmed, declining to comment on the number of patients or their statuses.
Perry has about 8,000 residents and is about 64 kilometres northwest of state capital Des Moines. Perry High School sits on the east edge of town. The high school and middle school are connected.
Students describe early morning shooting
Students preparing for their first classes after winter break were forced to duck into classrooms, barricade themselves in offices or run for an exit, before the suspected shooter was found dead.
Perry High school senior Ava Augustus said she was in a counsellor’s office, waiting for hers to arrive, when she heard three shots.
She and other people barricaded the door, preparing to throw things if necessary, with a window being too small for an escape. “And then we hear ‘He’s down. You can go out,'” Augustus said through tears.
“And I run and you can just see glass everywhere, blood on the floor. I get to my car and they’re taking a girl out of the auditorium who had been shot in her leg.”
Zander Shelley, 15, was in a hallway when he heard gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father, Kevin Shelley. Zander was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7:36 a.m. Kevin Shelley, who drives a garbage truck, told his boss he had to run. “It was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life,” he said.
Rachael Kares, an 18-year-old senior, was wrapping up jazz band practice when she and her bandmates heard what she described as four gunshots, spaced apart. “We all just jumped,” Kares said.
“My band teacher looked at us and yelled, ‘Run!’ So we ran.” Kares and many others from the school ran out past the football field, as she heard people yelling, “Get out! Get out!”
She said she heard additional shots as she ran, but didn’t know how many. She was more concerned about getting home to her three-year-old son. “At that moment I didn’t care about anything except getting out because I had to get home with my son,” she said.
Vigils were planned Thursday evening at a park and a local church. A post on the high school’s Facebook page said it would be closed Friday, with counselling services planned at the public library Friday and Saturday.
In Washington, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland was briefed on the shooting. FBI agents from the Omaha-Des Moines office are assisting with the investigation led by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
Mass shootings across the U.S. have long brought calls for stricter gun laws from gun safety advocates, and Thursday’s did within hours. But that idea has been a non-starter for many Republicans, particularly in rural, GOP-leaning states like Iowa.
As of July 2021, Iowa does not require a permit to purchase a handgun or carry a firearm in public, though it mandates a background check for a person buying a handgun without a permit.