One dead, five injured in Iowa high school shooting

PERRY (United States), Jan 05 (AFP): A teenage gunman killed one fellow student and wounded five other people before killing himself during a shooting Thursday at a high school in the midwestern US state of Iowa, authorities said.

Among those injured by the 17-year-old shooter were four other students and a school administrator, said Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Responding authorities also found a “pretty rudimentary” improvised explosive device in the school, which they disabled.

Authorities said Butler had a pump-action shotgun and a small-calibre handgun. Butler is believed to have shot himself. “Officers immediately attempted to locate the source of the threat and quickly found what appeared to be the shooter with a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation told reporters

Butler’s mother, alongside two of his friends, told The Associated Press that he was a quiet person who had been bullied for years.

Perry is about 65km (40 miles) northwest of Des Moines, on the edge of the state capital’s metropolitan area. It is home to a relatively diverse population of about 8,000 people living in low-slung, single-storey homes spread among trees now shorn of their leaves by winter. Census figures show 31 per cent of Perry’s residents are Hispanic.