A teenage student suffering from depression opened fire at an American school in northern Mexico yesterday, injuring three students and a teacher then shooting himself in the chin in what state officials called an unprecedented attack that was caught on video.
Local media had earlier reported three people were killed.
Aldo Fasci, security spokesman for the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said the 15-year-old student entered the Colegio Americano del Noreste with a gun and started shooting, leaving three of the victims and himself gravely injured.
“In the video, you can see the minor take out the gun, shoot the teacher and then another child,” Fasci told local television. “He is there for a while, pointing at other students, and a few minutes later he opens fire. We have no motive yet.”
Television footage showed ambulances and police outside the private bilingual school, which includes pre-school, elementary and high school classes, located south of the industrial city of Monterrey.
Fasci said one 15-year-old student was shot in the arm, and two 14-year-olds were shot and injured.
There were no details on the nationalities of the victims.
He said the shooter was being treated for depression and had brought a.22 calibre firearm from home.
Oscar Aboytes, spokesman for emergency services in Nuevo Leon, said all of the wounded were rushed to hospital. Photos widely distributed on social media showed three people lying on the floor of a classroom with pools of blood around their heads.
Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the images.
A receptionist at the school said she had no additional information on the shooting.
The school website says it offers bilingual education for students from preschool through ninth grade.
It was unclear how the student got the gun into the school.
Mexico once had a programme that checked book bags at school entrances, but in many places it has fallen into disuse.
“There was a reason why book bags were checked. I think we are going to have to start doing it again,” Fasci said.
Mexico has been largely spared the phenomenon of school shootings that has hit the US. In one of the few previous incidents, a 13-year-old student shot a 12-year-old classmate at a Mexico City school in 2004, seriously wounding her.
At the height of Mexico’s drug war between 2008 and 2011, schools in northern Mexico had considered a much greater threat the possibility that stray bullets from drug gang gun battles outside schools might enter classrooms.
Some schools conducted “duck and cover” drills to combat that possibility.
A student is escorted away to safety after the shooting at the Colegio Americano del Noreste in Monterrey, Mexico.
