Two 15-year-old female high school students have been shot dead at a school in Glendale, Arizona on Friday. Police have put the Independence High School campus on lockdown while they investigate the school shooting.
Glendale Police spokeperson Tracey Breeden said each of the two sophomoores sustained a single gunshot wound and were found dead next to eachother at the scene.
Police have reassured parents that it is not an ‘active shooter scene’, and say the two victims were found in an isolated area of campus near the administration building leading some to speculate that this could have been part of a suicide pact.
“This is not an active-shooter situation, and we realized that once we got on scene,” Breeden said.
Parents are being taking in buses to the school from a staging area near 75th and Glendale avenues to be reunited with their kids.
Two 15-year-old female students killed in shooting at Glendale, Arizona, high school, police say. https://t.co/Z55Np3gUvA
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) February 12, 2016
Azcentral.com reports:
Some parents expressed frustration at the slow process. Police said parents could authorize their children to leave school on foot, bicycle or with friends, rather than riding on the bus, to expedite evacuation.
Anxiety and worry were running high for parents uncertain of their children’s fate.
Some parents were frantically glued to their phones. One mother, her face blotchy with tears, was not. She couldn’t reach her daughter, whose phone was off.
About 2,000 students attend the school in the Glendale Union High School District.
Police activity in the area closed 75th Avenue between Glendale Avenue and Bethany Home Road. Buses transported parents from the staging area at 75th and Glendale avenues to pick up their children from the high school as soon as the lockdown is lifted.
A crisis mobile team was dispatched to the Walmart parking lot. Crisis Response Network has also set up a 24-hour crisis line for those impacted by the event, at 800-203-CARES (2273) or http://www.crisisnetwork.org/
All the district’s schools are now open. Cummings said the district sent automated phone messages to all of the households in the district.Jim Cummings, spokesman for the Glendale Elementary School District, said some of the district’s 17 elementary schools went into lockdown Friday morning as a precautionary measure.
“Anytime an incident like that happens in our community, it does have a ripple effect,” he said.
Glendale Elementary feeds into the Glendale Union High School District.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai