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Sheriff Tony Spurlock said the suspects were both students at STEM School Highlands Ranch, a charter school near Denver that serves more than 1,800 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
“We know two individuals walked into the STEM school, got deep inside the school and engaged students in two separate locations,” he said.
Eight students had been taken to area hospitals, and “several” were in critical condition, the sheriff said, although local hospitals described their conditions as less dire.
Spurlock said the suspects, who were armed with a handgun and other weapons, confronted law enforcement officers when they arrived. He said the suspects were not injured.
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“I can tell you that there were shots fired,” he said. “Our officers went in and engaged the suspects. We did struggle with the suspects to take them into custody.”
Spurlock said the school had no police officer assigned to it and used private security instead, but he did not say what actions that security service may have taken during the shooting. The sheriff said that the school alerted law enforcement “almost immediately after the first gunshots were fired” and that deputies arrived roughly two minutes later.
“I have to believe that the quick response of officers that got inside that school helped save lives,” the sheriff said.
Students were taken to Northridge Recreation Center in Highlands Ranch, where hundreds of anxious parents gathered to look for their children Tuesday afternoon.
Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado said the state government was monitoring the situation.
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. Last month, hundreds of schools in the Denver area were closed as law enforcement searched for a Florida woman who they said had made threats ahead of the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine, which is about 7 miles from the site of Tuesday’s shooting.
The woman, Sol Pais, 18, was found dead April 17 of an apparent self-inflicted shotgun wound.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.