A gunman opened fire at a high school in St. Louis, Missouri, killing a teacher and a teenage girl and injuring seven others.
The gunman entered Central High School for the Visual and Performing Arts shortly after 09:00 local time (1:00 GMT) on Monday.
The doors of the school building have been closed. It was not immediately clear how the suspect, later killed by the police, entered the school.
Eyewitnesses say lives were saved after the suspect’s weapon malfunctioned during the attack.
The St. Louis Public Schools Authority said police “quickly stopped” the gunman.
The suspect, who according to authorities was a 19-year-old former student, exchanged fire with police before dying from his injuries.
The suspect’s motives or his connection with the school, which has around 400 students, have yet to be determined.
Police told local media that a girl was pronounced dead inside the school, while a woman died in the hospital.
And local media reported that the injuries of the seven wounded – three girls and four boys – pose no threat to their lives.
City Police Commissioner Michael Sack said the students were leaving the school to jog when the officers arrived and that the attacker had a “long rifle”.
Sack added that seven of the school’s security staff acted quickly by alerting the other staff and calling the police.
Later, Sack said the suspect was in possession of hundreds of bullets, adding that the incident “could have been much worse”.
“This is a heartbreaking day for all of us,” he said. FBI agents are assisting with the investigation.
A student, Raven Terry, told a local news station that the attacker approached a friend and asked her, “Are you ready to die?”
“They said it was a student shooting,” Raven said of the police response.
“We ran so fast … we were just crying, we were all shocked about it.”
Tania Goldston, 16, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the gunman entered the courtroom he was in and tried to shoot her.
“I tried to escape and I couldn’t. Our eyes met but I managed to escape because his gun didn’t work.”
He said he heard the attacker say, “I’m tired of this damn school.”
Police said the gunman graduated last year and had no criminal record.
The dead teacher’s name is Jane Kochka and her family has identified her body.
Kochka, 61, had been teaching at the school since 2008, according to an online biography, and was a seven-year-old grandmother.
“My mother loved children,” her daughter, Abigail Kochka, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, adding that she died protecting her students.
The wounded are said to suffer from gunshot and shrapnel injuries and a heart attack.
“Our kids aren’t supposed to go through this,” St. Louis Mayor Techora Jones said at a news conference after the shooting.
Education Week figures show that there have been at least 35 school shootings since the beginning of the year.
On Monday, a Michigan teenager pleaded guilty to 24 counts, including terrorism and first degree murder, after opening fire at his high school last November.
