Iowa school shooting: Student armed with shotgun kills child and injures five others
One student has died and five were injured in a school shooting in Iowa, police have said.
The student who was killed was a sixth-grader, so would have been 11 or 12 years old.
The gunman, 17-year-old Dylan Butler, was also a student at the school. He died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.
Armed police at the scene. Pic: AP
Butler was armed with a pump-action shotgun and a handgun. Police said he was making posts on social media around the time of the attack.
An improvised explosive device was discovered when the school was searched by police.
Among those injured were students and an administrator, and one person is in a critical condition.
Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said there is no further risk to the public after the attack took place before classes had begun.
“Luckily, 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.
Police respond to the Perry High School shooting
The shooting took place at about 7.30am local time (1.30pm UK time) at Perry High School and officers arrived seven minutes later, the sheriff added.
A huge amount of emergency vehicles surrounded the building that houses both the town’s middle school and high school after the shooting.
Families are reunited at a community building following the shooting at Perry High School. Pic: AP
‘The most scared I have been in my entire life’
Zander Shelley was in a hallway waiting for the school day to start when he heard gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father Kevin.
The 15-year-old was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7.36am.
Kevin Shelley, who drives a rubbish truck, told his boss he had to leave work.
“It was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life,” he said.
Another student, Ava Augustus, described barricading a door after being unable to flee through a small window – and finding things to throw at the attacker if needed.
“And then we hear ‘He’s down. You can go out,'” she said through tears. “And I run and you can just see glass everywhere, blood on the floor. I get to my car and they’re taking a girl out of the auditorium who had been shot in her leg.”
Perry High School in Iowa. Pic: AP
‘One of our teachers started screaming at us’
A student named only as Carlos, who was outside the school at the time of the shooting, told NBC News: “I just heard a couple of bangs, not really gunshots. They were not very loud.
“We saw a bunch of kids running and we asked what happened … one of my girlfriend’s friends said it was a shooting, there was a shooter with a gun, and we got scared, we thought it was a prank or something.
“That’s when a bunch of cops started coming and we knew it was serious, we were trying to leave and one of our teachers started screaming at us.”
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Armed police at the scene. Pic: AP
US President Joe Biden is following the latest on the Iowa shooting, a White House official said – adding that senior staff have been in touch with the Iowa governor’s office.
Vigils have been planned at a nearby park and a local church, and the high school is going to remain closed on Friday.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said: “This senseless tragedy has shaken our entire state to its core.”
The shooting occurred on what was to be the first day of the spring semester, according to the school district’s calendar.
People embrace outside the McCreary Community Building . Pic: AP
Perry, a town of about 7,900, is about 40 miles (64km) northwest of Des Moines, the state’s capital city.
The mass shooting comes days before the Iowa caucuses, which will kick off the process of Republicans choosing their nominee to run for president in the 2024 US election.
While the attack has once again sparked calls for stricter gun laws, such policies are non-starters in rural, Republican-leaning states like Iowa.
The state does not require a permit to purchase a handgun or carry a firearm in public, though it mandates a background check for a person buying a handgun without a permit.
There were 346 incidents where a gun was brandished or fired at a US school – or a bullet hit school property – in 2023. That’s the highest since records began in 1966, and the third year in a row that the record has been broken.
Four incidents have already been reported since 2024 began.
The tone has changed totally. It’s a remarkable turnaround from the Oval Office meltdown to the perfect phone call.
President Trump is wholly transactional. His desire for give and take far outweighs any ideological instincts. He has no particular alignment to Ukraine or, for that matter, to Russia.
He just wants a deal. Peace would stop the killing as he has said repeatedly. It would also allow for deals which can benefit America: recouping the taxpayer money spent on Ukraine and reconnecting the American economy with Russia.
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Will Trump turn on Putin?
But trumping all that is his legacy and his image. He wants to be seen as the peacemaker president.
Since the Oval Office moment, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy seems now to have recognised all that.
Ukraine’s approach towards Trump has changed. Zelenskyy is now playing his game: transactionalism.
The minerals deal hasn’t dissolved. The indications I am getting is that it’s essentially been upgraded and broadened to a wider scope: fuller economic cooperation.
Zelenskyy needs to encourage America deep into his country economically. Has he bought into the idea that a US economic footprint amounts to a key part of a security guarantee?
Read more:
A timeline of Trump and Zelenskyy’s relationship
What could be the future of Ukraine?
Sky’s correspondents react to Trump-Putin phone call
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The old adage is: “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” That’s too true with President Trump.
Zelenskyy now feels like he’s at the table and I am told he doesn’t feel coerced.
The challenges remain huge though: he doesn’t trust Putin. That’s what he tried to tell President Trump in the Oval Office. The performance that day proved to him that Trump is inclined to trust Putin.
Zelenskyy must use transactionalism to draw an impatient Trump in.
President Trump is in a hurry for a deal. He’s inclined to accept wholly disingenuous commitments from Russia, or as one source put it to me: “Trump has a high tolerance for bullshit…”
That’s the jeopardy for Zelenskyy.
US
Donald Trump has ‘very good’ call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he discusses US ownership of Ukrainian energy plants
US President Donald Trump has had a “very good” call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the White House says, during which US ownership of Ukraine’s energy network was discussed to help protect it.
Mr Trump also agreed to “help locate” additional air defence support in Europe after a request from the Ukrainian leader, a statement about the one-hour phone call said.
Further talks will take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the coming days, and the US will continue intelligence sharing with Ukraine, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Mr Trump also agreed to work to ensure missing Ukrainian children are returned home and both parties agreed to a temporary 30-day ceasefire involving attacks against energy facilities, with the US president saying the US “could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise”, Ms Leavitt said.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio also issued a statement about the call saying that “President Trump also discussed Ukraine’s electrical supply and nuclear power plants.
“He said that the United States could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise. American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure.”
The White House statement added that Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy also reviewed the situation in Kursk and agreed to share information closely.
The presidents instructed their teams to move ahead with the details of implementing a partial ceasefire, with discussions to include expanding any ceasefire to the Black Sea.
“We have never been closer to peace,” Ms Leavitt added.
In comments later on Wednesday, Mr Zelenskyy said that Mr Trump understands that Ukraine will not recognise occupied land as Russian, and that he would like the US president to visit Ukraine – adding that “it would be helpful for Trump in his peace efforts”.
In an earlier statement, President Zelenskyy said the two leaders had “a positive, very substantive and frank conversation”.
Mr Zelenskyy echoed much of Mr Trump’s statement about what was decided, and said later that he “felt no pressure” from the US president.
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Trump and Zelenskyy ‘on track’
“We agreed that Ukraine and the United States should continue working together to achieve a real end to the war and lasting peace. We believe that together with America, with President Trump, and under American leadership, lasting peace can be achieved this year,” Mr Zelenskyy said
He added that Ukraine would “continue working to make this happen”.
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“I stressed that Ukrainians want peace, which is why Ukraine accepted the proposal for an unconditional ceasefire,” he said. “I highlighted the importance of President Trump’s concept of peace through strength. We agreed to maintain constant contact, including at the highest level and through our teams.”
In an earlier post on Truth Social, Mr Trump said the “very good” phone call lasted around one hour.
Read more:
A timeline of Trump and Zelenskyy’s relationship
What could be the future of Ukraine?
Sky’s correspondents react to Trump-Putin phone call
“Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs,” Mr Trump said.
“We are very much on track,” he added.
The call marks the first time Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy have spoken since the disastrous confrontation in the White House last month.
Mr Zelenskyy travelled to Washington expecting to sign a critical minerals deal but left early after he and Trump clashed in front of the world’s cameras.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin held a phone call lasting about an hour and a half in which the Russian leader rejected a full 30-day ceasefire.
He agreed to not attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days. The two countries also swapped 175 prisoners each earlier this morning.
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