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Girl arrested after shooting at US school

Rebecca BooneAAP
Police have taken a sixth-grade girl into custody after she shot and wounded three people.
Camera IconPolice have taken a sixth-grade girl into custody after she shot and wounded three people. Credit: AP

A girl has brought a gun to her Idaho middle school, shot and wounded two students and a custodian, and then was disarmed by a teacher, authorities say.

The three were shot in their extremities and were expected to survive, officials said at a news conference.

Jefferson County Sheriff Steve Anderson says the sixth-grade girl pulled a handgun from her backpack and fired multiple rounds inside and outside Rigby Middle School in the small city of Rigby.

A female teacher disarmed the girl and held her until law enforcement arrived and took her into custody, authorities said, without giving other details.

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Authorities said they were investigating the motive for the attack and where the girl got the gun.

She is from the nearby city of Idaho Falls, Anderson said.

Dr Michael Lemon, trauma medical director at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center, said the injured adult was treated and released for a bullet wound in an extremity.

The bullet went cleanly through the limb, he said.

Both of the students who were shot were being held at the hospital overnight, and one of them might need surgery, Lemon said.

Still, both students were in fair condition. One of the students had wounds in two limbs and might have been shot twice, he said.

Police were called to the school about 9.15am after students and staffers heard gunfire.

Multiple law enforcement agencies responded, and students were moved to a nearby high school to be reunited with their parents.

The attack appears to be Idaho’s second school shooting. In 1999, a student at a high school in Notus fired a shotgun several times.

No one was struck by the gunfire, but one student was injured by ricocheting debris.

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