Joppatowne High School Shooting: What We Know

A student allegedly shot his classmate at Joppatowne High School in Maryland on Friday, police said.

A 16-year-old boy, for whom it was his first day of school even though it was the fourth day of the school year, allegedly shot a 15-year-old boy during a dispute in a bathroom of the high school located roughly 37 minutes northwest of Baltimore.

Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said the victim is believed to have been shot once. School nurses attended to the victim before the teen was taken to a hospital in serious condition.

“It’s a tragic day, four days into the school year,” Gahler said at a news conference on Friday.

The 16-year-old suspect fled to a nearby apartment complex, where police apprehended him minutes later. No weapon has been recovered so far. The suspect will be charged as an adult, Gahler said.

Students were evacuated following the incident, and a parent-student reunification center was established at a local church.

Gahler said that the school’s principal and resource officer responded immediately to the incident and that the first outside deputy arrived at the school within two minutes. Over 100 officers were on the scene within 15 minutes.

“The system worked and it worked in this instance,” Gahler said.

The shooting comes just two days after a 14-year-old student, Colt Gray, allegedly shot and killed two students and two teachers with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, before surrendering to school resource officers.

The victims in the Georgia incident were identified as students Mason Schermehorn and Christian Angulo, both aged 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie.

At least nine other people, including eight students and one teacher, were injured in the shooting and taken to hospitals. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said they were all expected to survive.

Gray appeared in court on Friday to face four counts of felony murder. He will be tried as an adult in the case. Gray’s father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, also appeared in court on Friday to face 14 charges—four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children—for allegedly allowing his son access to the rifle police say he used in the shooting.

There have been 384 mass shootings this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in the U.S. The nonprofit defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.