A Tennessee high school student has been shot dead after opening fire at a police officer during a shoot out at a high school in Knoxville, Tennessee, authorities said Monday.
Reports say that police responded to a report of a male who was possibly armed in the school and on arrival, the person who shot the officer, a student at Austin-East Magnet High School, died at the scene when police returned fire.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said that the police found the suspect in a school restroom. Police ordered him out, but he refused.
Rausch said that as police entered the restroom, he “reportedly fired shots, striking an officer.” One officer returned fire, and the student was pronounced dead at the scene. There are no other known gunshot victims, police said.
Investigators did not provide further details about the student or his intentions. It was not immediately clear if the wounded officer fired the shot that killed the student.
“It was just very chilling first of all to hear we have an officer down and secondly that it was at a school,” Eve M. Thomas, the Knoxville police chief, said at the news conference.
Indya Kincannon, the Knoxville mayor, told reporters that the officer, with whom she had met on Monday, required surgery but was expected to recover.
“I thanked him for putting his life on the line to protect the students and staff at the school,” she said. “He said, he’d rather that he be hurt than anybody else.”
