The toll announced by the police in the city of Madison, Wisconsin, so far shows three dead and six injured this Monday, December 16. The alleged perpetrator of the shots was believed to have died before the officers intervened.
Yet another gun-related tragedy in the United States. A shooting at a Wisconsin school on Monday, December 16, left three people dead, including the suspected shooter who is believed to be a 15-year-old girl, and at least six other people were injured, according to authorities. “She was pronounced dead while being transferred to a local hospital,” said a police official, adding that the student had, according to the first elements, succumbed to “a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” Investigators are still trying to understand the motivations of this suspected young woman, specifying that members of her family had been questioned.
The shot student and teacher died at the scene of the tragedy. Among the injured hospitalized, two students are between life and death, two people are in stable condition, and two others have been released from the hospital, he said. It was at 10:57 a.m. local time on Monday that Madison police were notified by an elementary school student of a shooting at this private Christian establishment Abundant Life which welcomes approximately 400 students, ranging from kindergarten to high school. The first police officers arrived about three minutes later. When the students understood that the alert was not an exercise, they reacted “brilliantly”, greeted Barbara Wiers, a school official, at a press conference.
2024, second worst year behind 2023
Outgoing President Joe Biden described the shooting in a statement as “shocking” and“insane”. He urged Congress to “act” to pass more restrictive laws in a country that has more individual firearms than people. Gun control and school safety have become major political and social issues in the United States, where the number of school shootings has increased in recent years. 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.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database website, there have been 322 school shootings this year in the United States. According to this database, this is the second highest annual total since 1966, exceeded only by the 349 shootings recorded last year.
Update : at 9:57 p.m., with confirmation that the alleged shooter is a teenager, as well as the addition of the identities of two victims; Tuesday at 7:28 a.m. with further details.
