At least three people were injured in a shooting Thursday morning at a high school in Perry, Iowa, multiple law enforcement sources briefed on the matter told NBC News. The gunman is believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the officials said.
Two of the injured were students and the other was an administrator. One of the injuries may be fatal, the officials said, but it was not clear and the investigation is ongoing.
An active shooter was reported at Perry High School at 7:37 a.m. Thursday morning and officers arrived seven minutes later, according to Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante. Infante said officers located multiple people with injuries, but couldn’t confirm how many there were or their conditions.
The sheriff said that school had not yet started when the shooting began.
“Luckily, so there were very few students and faculty in the building, which I think contributed to a good outcome in that sense,” he said at a news briefing.
The shooter has been identified, but the sheriff declined to release further details.
The shooting came as students were returning to classes for the first day back after their annual winter break.
An enormous number of emergency vehicles surrounded the building that houses the town’s middle school and high school.
A Mercy One Hospital spokesperson confirmed to NBC that victims from the high school are headed their way, but the official could not confirm how many patients were expected.
Linda Andorf, board president for the Perry Community School District, told NBC News that news of the shooting is “terrible.”
“It is horrendously awful,” she said. “People need to figure out their life. This is just disgusting. It’s terrible.”
An email message left with Superintendent Clark Wicks was not immediately returned.
Zander Shelley, 15, was in a hallway waiting for the first day of school after break to start when he heard gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father, Kevin Shelley. Zander was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7:36 a.m.
Kevin Shelley, who drives a garbage truck, told his boss he had to run. “It was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life,” he said.
Erica Jolliff said that her daughter, a ninth grader, reported getting rushed from the school grounds at 7:45 am. Distraught, Jolliff was still looking for her son Amir, a sixth grader, one hour later.
“I just want to know that he’s safe and OK,” Jolliff said. “They won’t tell me nothing.”
Rachael Kares, an 18-year-old senior, was wrapping up jazz band practice at 8:37 a.m. — she had just looked at her watch — when she and her bandmates heard what she described as four gunshots, spaced apart.
“We all just jumped,” Kares said. “My band teacher looked at us and yelled, ‘Run!’ So we ran.”
Kares and many others from the school ran out past the football field, as she heard people yelling, “Get out! Get out!” She said she heard additional shots as she ran, but didn’t know how many. She was more concerned about getting home to her 3-year-old son.
“At that moment I didn’t care about anything except getting out because I had to get home with my son,” she said.
The shooting occurred in the backdrop of the Iowa caucuses and not far from where Republican candidates were campaigning.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, about the shooting.
“Pray for the community in Perry, Iowa this morning,” he wrote.
Ramaswamy was hosting a campaign event in Perry on Thursday.
The high school is part of the 1,785-student Perry Community School District. Perry is about 40 miles (64.37 kilometers) miles northwest of Des Moines.
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