Surrounded by officials, Sheriff Tony Spurlock of Douglas County identified the suspects in the shooting Tuesday at STEM School Highlands Ranch, which killed an 18-year-old senior who had only three days of classes left and injured eight other students. Earlier, he said, officers had mistakenly identified the juvenile as a young man.
The suspects, who were also students at the school, carried two handguns and at least one of them was restrained by a school security officer by the time law enforcement arrived, the sheriff said.
The sheriff said the attackers got “deep inside the school,” which he described as having two major crime scenes, including a classroom where most of the shooting took place. At least one student, he added “actually tried to stop one of the suspects and was shot.” That student was injured but survived, he said.
“We are going to hear about very heroic things that have taken place,” Spurlock said.
While details of the shooting remained sparse, relayed some of the chaos that erupted in their classroom.
Brad Bialy said his oldest son, Brendan, a senior, told him that he was in class when gunfire erupted. Bialy said his son told him that two students entered the classroom and one pulled a gun out of a guitar case.
He said his son and two friends tried to tackle the gunman, but one of the boys was shot in the chest. Other students tried to stanch the bleeding by putting pressure on his chest, Bialy said.
Spurlock said deputies had to force their way into the school because it was locked down. Law enforcement happened to choose a door that was near the shooting and quickly apprehended one of the suspects, who was identified as Devon Erickson, 18.
Erickson will have his first court hearing Wednesday afternoon, said District Attorney George Brauchler. He added that he would consider trying the juvenile suspect as an adult. Brauchler, a Republican, is well known in the state for his support of the death penalty and led the prosecution of the man convicted of killing 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.
On Tuesday evening, police tape was strung up outside the prim brick suburban home where neighbors said Erickson’s family has lived since the late 1990s. A next-door neighbor who declined to be named described him as a quiet young man who sometimes deflected eye contact and played several musical instruments.
Spurlock said neither suspect had been on law enforcement’s radar before the shooting and that the motive was unknown. He declined to say how the suspects had obtained the guns, though in Colorado it is illegal for anyone under 21 to own a handgun.
The shooting at the Highlands Ranch charter school is the latest at an educational institution, a phenomenon that has rattled communities nationwide as young people continue to face mortal danger in places long considered safe havens. One week earlier, a man with a pistol shot six people on the last day of spring classes at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, killing two.
STEM School Highlands Ranch, which has about 1,800 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, will be closed for the rest of the week. Douglas County is an affluent area south of Denver with about 350,000 people. It sits next to Jefferson County, home to Columbine High School, and students there are already primed to watch for gunmen.
Students who were not injured Tuesday afternoon were taken to Northridge Recreation Center in Highlands Ranch, where hundreds of anxious parents gathered to look for their children.
“I heard a gunshot,” said Makai Dixon, 8, a second grader who had been training for this moment, with active shooter drills and lockdowns, since he was in kindergarten. “I’d never heard it before.”
Makai’s parents said they joined thousands of others in rushing to the school as news blazed through the suburban community.
“We’re more messed up than they are,” Makai’s mother, Rocio, said as they walked to their car.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.