A school shooting in Wisconsin, United States, leaves two dead; the suspect, a 15-year-old student, is dead

A shooting in a school in Wisconsin, in the United States, on Monday, December 16, left two people dead – a teacher and a student – ​​and several injured. “The shooter has been identified” as a 15-year-old girl, said Shon Barnes, the police chief of this city in the Midwestern state, assuring that she was educated at the private school Abundant Life Christian School.

“She was pronounced dead while being transferred to a local hospital”specified the police officer, adding that she had, according to the first elements, succumbed to “a self-inflicted gunshot wound”. Mr. Barnes also declared that the student and the teacher had been shot dead 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. Initially, police announced that five people had been killed.

At 10:57 a.m. Monday (5:57 p.m. Paris time), Madison police were notified of a shooting in progress at the school, a private establishment that accommodates nearly 400 students, ranging from kindergarten to high school. The first police officers arrived about three minutes later, Mr. Barnes said.

Questioned by local channel WISC, a young student claimed to have heard two gunshots. “We heard them and some people started crying, and then we just waited for the police to arrive”he said, in an extract broadcast by the CNN channel.

At least 16,000 deaths by firearms since the start of the year

In a previous press conference, the Madison police chief clarified that a “handgun” had been found. Investigators are still trying to understand the motivations of this young girl suspected of being behind the shootings, Mr. Barnes said Monday evening, adding that members of her family had been questioned.

“This is truly a sad day for Madison and for our country”said Mr. 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”for her part declared the mayor of Madison, Satya Rhodes-Conway. “I hoped this day would never come to Madison”regretted the democratic councilor.

The United States is paying a very heavy price for the spread of firearms on its territory and the ease with which Americans have access to them. More than 16,000 people have been killed by firearms since the start of the year in the country, according to Gun Violence Archive, the NGO recording 487 cases of shootings resulting in at least four deaths or injuries.

School killings particularly shock public opinion, such as that perpetrated in 2012 in an elementary school in Newton (Connecticut), during which twenty children aged 6 and 7 were killed. Such an event was repeated in May 2022 when an 18-year-old man shot and killed nineteen students and two teachers in 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, had triggered a vast national movement, with youth at the spearhead, to demand stricter regulation of individual weapons in the United States. .

Joe Biden urges Congress to act on guns

US President Joe Biden on Monday called the Madison shooting a “shocking and unacceptable” and urged Congress to act immediately to pass more restrictive gun laws.

“From Newtown to Uvalde, from Parkland to Madison, and so many other shootings that receive no attention, it is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence,” he said in a statement.

“We cannot continue to accept it as something normal. Every child deserves to feel safe in their classroom. Our nation's students should learn to read and write, not learn to duck and take cover,” added the president.