Student accused in Washington school shooting blamed ‘bullying’

(Reuters) — The teenager accused of opening fire at his Washington state high school, killing a student, told police he took the firearms from his father’s gun safe and wanted to teach his classmates a lesson about “bullying,” court papers showed on Thursday (September 14).

An affidavit filed by a police detective following 15-year-old Caleb Sharpe’s arrest stated that the suspect said he had been picked on by the slain boy, identified only by his initials, S.D.S., who told Sharpe: “I always knew you were going to shoot up the school.”

Sharpe discarded an AR-15 assault rifle that had jammed and fired into the boy’s abdomen and face with a pistol before walking down a hallway at Freeman High School in the Spokane suburb of Rockford, shooting indiscriminately at other classmates, according to the court papers.

“The family has asked the entire community to pray for and continue to pray for all of the children and their families that were involved in this incident. The family also asked the media for privacy and respect for all parties involved as they deal with their grief,” said Bevan Maxey, the Sharpe family attorney.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich on Thursday (September 14) described the chain of events that ended in the fatal shooting of a student at Freeman high school near Spokane, Washington a day earlier.

Sharpe, carrying two guns, opened fire at his school on Wednesday (September 13), killing one classmate and injuring three others before he was apprehended by a custodian.

“That young man was carrying an AR-15 and a handgun. Thank God, he had jammed that AR up so badly that it was not going to function. He transitioned to that pistol and when one of the classmates that he knew came up to him and tried to talk him out of it, he put one round in his mid section and one round in his head,” Knezovich said.

Knezovich said a janitor, Joe Bowen, held down the shooter after he ran out of ammunition.

A freshman who witnessed the shooting told local KREM-TV that the shooter, a classmate since elementary school, stalked the hallway with a pistol and second gun, appearing calm as he fired at his victims and the ceiling.

The girl said that the suspect was an “outgoing” boy who she would not have thought capable of such violence. But she said other students had told her that he had made an ominous post about his intentions on a social media account.