ST. LOUIS — A gunman entered a south St. Louis high school on Monday with a “long gun” and multiple high-capacity magazines, shooting a teenage girl and a health teacher to death and injuring several others before police shot and killed him, authorities said.
Police identified the suspect late Monday as Orlando Harris, 19, a graduate last year of the school, Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, at Arsenal Street and South Kingshighway near Tower Grove Park.
One survivor heard the shooter say he was “tired of everybody” in the school. Police said the damage could have been far worse. The shooter’s gun jammed at one point, one student said, giving kids time to escape. And police found more than a dozen 30-round magazines on him.
Authorities did not release the names of the woman and the teenage girl who died. But relatives of the woman identified her to the Post-Dispatch as 61-year-old Jean Kuczka, who taught health and physical education. Kuczka, a mother of five, lived in the Dittmer area of Jefferson County.
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And family and friends said sophomore Alexandria Bell, 16, loved art and dance and was constantly smiling.
Four other students were shot and injured — two in the leg, one in the arm, and one in the hands and jaw. Two more students suffered abrasions, and a girl fractured her ankle.
Interim St. Louis police Commissioner Michael Sack said Monday evening that he was “extremely proud” of the police response. The call for an active shooter came in at 9:11 a.m., and the shooter was shot 14 minutes later on the school’s third floor. He said a security officer saw the man trying to enter the building, and police were alerted.
Several parents and St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones also commended the police response.
“This could have been much worse,” Sack said.
Sack refused to say how the gunman got into the building but said all doors were locked. The building has metal detectors and seven security officers.
Sack said the gunman had no criminal history.
There are two magnet high schools on the campus — Central Visual and Performing Arts, with about 400 students, and Collegiate School of Medicine and Bioscience, with about 300 students.
David Williams, a math teacher at the school, said the school principal came over the loudspeaker around 9 a.m. and said the code phrase that indicates a shooter in the building. Williams heard multiple shots outside his classroom, and one of the windows on the classroom door was shot out. He then heard a man say, “You are all going to (expletive) die.”
Police haven’t said how many shots were fired inside the school.
Elijah Pohlman, a 15-year-old sophomore, said it was chaos when the code came over the loudspeaker. He said he texted…
Read More: Teacher and teen killed in shooting at south St. Louis high school. Suspect is dead.