DETROIT–Officials were trying to find a way to quell the violence and reassure frightened parents after a fight involving two high school students apparently led to a shooting on a primary-school lawn that killed one of them, police said. Three othe
DETROIT–Officials were trying to find a way to quell the violence and reassure frightened parents after a fight involving two high school students apparently led to a shooting on a primary school lawn that killed one of them, police said. Three other teens were wounded, and three more were in custody. A community meeting was planned for Friday at Henry Ford High School, where a day earlier classes had just let out when a gunman stepped out of a black Mazda SUV and opened fire at an elementary school next door. "I heard girls screaming, and I saw 100, 200 kids running back toward the school," said Jamile Barber, 31, who lives across the street. "From there it was just chaos, people screaming and scrambling around." Barber said he saw "two bodies, stiff and not moving" on the lawn outside the Michigan Technical Academy campus for pre-kindergarten through second grade, next to the high school. Christopher Walker, 16, was pronounced dead at Providence Hospital, a spokesman said. He was an 11th-grader at Henry Ford, Detroit Public Schools spokesman Steve Wasko told the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News. A 15-year-old female student was being treated at Providence, while two males — a 15-year-old student and a 16-year-old former student — were being treated at another hospital, Wasko said. All three were in serious condition late Thursday, Deputy Police Chief James Tate said. Three males aged 15, 16 and 18 were arrested at their homes hours after the shooting, Tate said. Only the 16-year-old is a Henry Ford student, he said. Police recovered a black Mazda SUV that witnesses saw the suspects riding in, but they had not recovered any weapons, Tate said. He said at least seven shell casings from an automatic weapon were found at the shooting scene. It wasn’t known whether anyone was inside the Michigan Technical Academy at the time. The high school is on a busy street in a neighborhood of well-kept brick ranch houses and clean, tree-lined side streets. Barber, who grew up on Detroit’s east side, said he moved there in July with his two daughters. "It seemed to be a pretty good neighborhood," he said. "But now I’ve been hearing it’s one of the worst schools in Detroit. People told me, ‘You just wait till school starts.’" AP ______ Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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