A 17-year-old gunman opened fire at Perry High School in Iowa on Thursday morning, killing a sixth-grade student and injuring five others, authorities said.
The sixth grader was a student at Perry Middle School, which shares a campus with the high school. Four other students and an administrator were injured in the shooting; the severity of their injuries was not immediately clear. Easton Valley Community School District officials identified the administrator as Perry High School principal Dan Marburger. Several patients were being treated for gunshot wounds at Iowa Methodist Medical Center and MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center.
The alleged shooter, Dylan Butler, was found dead at the scene with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Butler arrived on campus before the start of the school day with a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun, according to Mitch Mortvedt, the assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Officers discovered a “rudimentary” improvised explosive device at the scene as well.
Police are still investigating Butler’s motive for the deadly shooting, which took place before school hours but during a morning breakfast program. It was students’ first day back at school after winter break.
Investigators are reviewing social-media posts that Butler made around the time of the shooting, Mortvedt said.
Iowa governor Kim Reynolds called the shooting a “senseless tragedy” that has “shaken our entire state to the core.”
“Our hearts are heavy today, and our prayers are with the Perry community,” Reynolds told reporters. Perry, a community of 8,000 people, is roughly 40 miles northwest of the capital city of Des Moines.
Several Republican presidential candidates have been campaigning in the state ahead of the January 15 Iowa caucuses.
Vivek Ramaswamy held a prayer circle in the area hours after the attack.
“God please help our country,” Ramaswamy said during the event.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who also was in the state at the time of the shooting, expressed support for the victims of the shooting and suggested that lawmakers should focus on addressing mental-health issues to prevent school shootings.
“For whatever reason, there are people in our society that really get a kick out of doing this,” DeSantis said. “And you have people that put it online and do all that. And that’s an underlying sickness in society. And I think that involves things like mental health.”
“We obviously have a responsibility to create safe environments,” he continued. “Federal government is probably not going to be leading that effort. I think it is more of a local and state issue.”