United States: Four dead in school shooting, minor suspect shot dead

A teenager opened fire Monday in his school in Madison, in the north of the United States, killing two people and injuring six others before being found dead, according to the authorities, yet another tragedy in this country regularly bereaved by school killings.

“Three people are dead, including the suspected shooter,” said Shon Barnes, the police chief of this Midwestern American city. The suspect, whose age or gender he does not reveal, is a “teenage student” attending the private school Abundant Life Christian School. At 10:57 a.m. local time Monday, Madison police were notified of a shooting in progress at this private Christian school which serves nearly 400 students, ranging from kindergarten to high school.

“The shooter was dead before we arrived,” said Shon Barnes, specifying that a “handgun” had been found at the scene of the tragedy. The killing occurred in a single space in the establishment: “I don’t know if it was in a classroom or in a corridor,” he explained. “We have secured the school, there are no other threats or danger to the community,” he assured, affirming that he did not know, at this time, the motivations of the suspect.

Tony Evers, Governor of Wisconsin, said on his .

Joe Biden called the shooting “shocking and senseless” in a statement on Monday. “Congress must act,” commented the American president, who has long been calling in vain for tougher laws on firearms. “This is truly a sad day for Madison and for our country,” said Shon Barnes, who began his career as a teacher before becoming a police officer.

“I think we need to do better in our country and our community to prevent gun violence,” said Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. “I hoped that this day would never come to Madison,” lamented the Democratic city councilor.

Repeated killings in schools provoke strong emotion in public opinion in the United States, a country which pays a very heavy price for the dissemination of firearms and the ease with which the population has access to them.

In September, a 14-year-old teenager killed four people, two students of his age and two teachers, by opening fire in his high school in Georgia. In 2012, a madman shot and killed 20 children aged six and seven in a Connecticut elementary school.

Such a traumatic event was repeated in May 2022 when an 18-year-old man shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Between these two tragedies, a massacre committed in a high school in Florida, on February 14, 2018 in Parkland, triggered a vast national movement, with youth at the forefront, to demand stricter regulation of individual weapons in the United States. Without really moving the lines.