(CNN) A 17-year-old male student shot two other students at Great Mills High School in Maryland on Tuesday morning before a school resource officer engaged him and stopped the threat, authorities said.
The incident began in a school hallway at 7:55 a.m., just before classes started. Authorities say Austin Wyatt Rollins, armed with a handgun, shot a female and a male student. The shooter had a prior relationship with the female student, St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said.
School resource officer Blaine Gaskill responded to the scene in less than a minute, the sheriff said. Gaskill fired a round at the shooter, and the shooter fired a round simultaneously, Cameron said.
Rollins was later pronounced dead. Gaskill was unharmed. The 16-year-old female student is in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, and the 14-year-old male student who was shot is in stable condition.
Cameron said he was not sure whether Gaskill's bullet hit the suspect, but he praised the officer's quick response to the situation.
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GREAT MILLS, Md. -- A teenager with a handgun opened fire inside his Maryland high school Tuesday before he was fatally wounded during a confrontation with a school resource officer, a sheriff said. Deputies and federal agents converged on the crime scene at Great Mills High School, about 65 miles southeast of Washington.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the shooter took his own life or was killed by the officer's bullet, St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said.
A 16-year-old girl, later identified as Jaelynn Willey, was hospitalized with a life-threatening wound, the sheriff said, and a 14-year-old boy also suffered a gunshot wound to the thigh. He was in good condition. The officer, who doubles as a SWAT team member, was unharmed.
Cameron identified the suspect as 17-year-old student Austin Wyatt Rollins. He said Rollins used a Glock semiautomatic handgun to shoot the girl, who he had a prior relationship with.
St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office
A school resource officer, Deputy First Class Blaine Gaskill, then faced off with the shooter, the sheriff said. Each fired one shot simultaneously. Cameron said the gunman later died from his wounds. He said that the investigation would determine whether the round the officer fired hit the shooter.
Cameron said he didn't know the nature or extent of the relationship between the suspect and the girl. Investigators are working to determine whether that was part of the motive.
"This is something that we train, practice, and in reality we hope would never come to fruition, it is our worst nightmare," Cameron said at a press conference Tuesday.
Responding to a question from CBS News' Jeff Pegues, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said it's possible the actions of the school resource officer may have saved others' lives.
"It sure sounds like this is exactly the way it should have been handled," Hogan said.
St. Mary's schools superintendent James Smith also praised the actions of the school resource officer, as well as first responders and school staff. He said the county has re-engaged in a conversation about school safety after the school shooting that left 17 dead last month in Parkland, Florida.
"If you don't think this can't happen at your school, you are sadly mistaken," Smith said.
Officers in St. Mary's have undergone additional training to prepare individual officers to confront shooters, according to Cameron. He said that while he couldn't speak to the shooter's motive or target, "What we do know is the [school resource officer] did his job, engaged, and stopped the potential threat."
Politicians responded swiftly, acknowledging that this shooting increases the pressure for action against gun violence as anger swells nationwide over the Parkland killings by a teenager with an assault weapon.
However in this case, it appeared that the shooter had illegally possessed the gun. In Maryland, a person must be 21 to possess a handgun, unless carrying one is required for employment.
St. Mary Co. Sheriff Tim Cameron on shooting at Great Mills HS: shooting happened in hallway; shooter, a student, fired at a female student, another was student hit. Armed school resource ofc, a deputy, exchanged shots w/ shooter; shooter & female student in critical condition — Peggy Fox (@PeggyTV) March 20, 2018
Student Mollie Davis told CBS News over Twitter that she heard what sounded like a loud balloon pop.
"I was in my classroom and heard everyone screaming," Mollie said. "I've never heard people sound so scared."
Police officers told students that the threat was over and the school would be evacuated soon, the student said.
The Baltimore Sun reported that a student said the shooting happened around 8 a.m. Terrence Rhames, 18, told the Sun that he heard a gunshot and saw a girl fall as he ran for an exit. "I just thank god I'm safe," Rhames said. "I just want to know who did it and who got injured."
Agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives joined deputies at Great Mills High School as students endured a lengthy lockdown, cowering inside classrooms and a locker room while officers worked to make sure there were no more threats on campus.
Police eventually kicked in the locker room door, said Ziyanna Williams, a 14-year-old ninth-grader.
"They came in with guns, and they probably thought there might be another shooter, of course," she said. "About an hour or two later they came -- more police came -- and told us they would search us and search our bags and stuff."
Eventually, the students were escorted outside.
The school has about 1,600 students and is near the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. On Tuesday, ambulances, firetrucks and other emergency vehicles crowded the parking lot and the street outside, where about 20 school buses lined up in the rain to take students to nearby Leonardtown High School to be picked up by their parents.
Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer said the officer at the school "answered the call this morning with swiftness, professionalism, and courage." He said it's now for Congress to take action.
"We sympathize. We empathize. We have moments of silence. But we don't have action," Hoyer said. "Wringing our hands is not enough."
It is likely to draw further attention to the role of armed personnel in schools, which has been widely discussed after surveillance video showed that a sheriff’s deputy posted at the school in Parkland did not go inside a building to engage the gunman during that shooting, an apparent violation of protocol.
The authorities were quick to praise the school resource officer at Great Mills High, Deputy Blaine Gaskill, who they said responded almost immediately to the gunman and fired his weapon. Deputy Gaskill was unharmed in the exchange.
“He pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter,” Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron of St. Mary’s County said. The officer, he said, then “fired a round at the shooter; simultaneously the shooter fired a round as well.”
But it was not immediately clear, the sheriff said, whether Deputy Gaskill’s shot had struck Mr. Rollins. And while Sheriff Cameron initially suggested that Mr. Rollins had shot both the 16-year-old and the 14-year-old victims, he said later that he was unable to confirm who had injured the 14-year-old, who was transported to a hospital in stable condition.
Neither victim was identified by the authorities. Sheriff Cameron said it seemed a “prior relationship” had existed between the gunman and the female victim, although he did not say what it was.
The sheriff said she was in the intensive care unit “with life-threatening critical injuries.”
The F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sent agents to the school and were conducting a trace on Mr. Rollins’s weapon, Sheriff Cameron said.
Deputy Gaskill’s intervention could increase calls for more schools around the country to add school resource officers, who play hybrid roles sometimes described as part security guard, part educator and part counselor. Currently, at least 30 percent of schools in the United States are believed to have such officers.
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But some opponents argue that a police presence in schools increases the chances students will be arrested unnecessarily for minor infractions.
There are few statistics on the effectiveness of school resource officers, although the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers pointed to other instances in which it credited the presence of the officers for saving lives.
In a 2013 shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo., that resulted in one student’s death, for example, a school resource officer was credited with preventing more carnage after pursuing the gunman into the school library, where he killed himself, according to Mac Hardy, chief of operations for the association.
Great Mills High, like so many other schools across the country, was already reckoning with school violence in the aftermath of the Florida shooting. There had been new discussions about school safety. There was an ominous Snapchat posting about a possible threat, which stirred worry but was found to be a hoax. Last week, there was a walkout by students calling for stronger gun control measures.
And then, shortly before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the authorities said, Mr. Rollins pulled out his weapon and opened fire.
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“It sounded like a shelf, like something fell,” said Shawnye Willis, 17, who was standing in the hallway, near an art class.
But then he saw a girl fall forward, and collapse on the ground. When she dropped, he said, he knew it was serious. Teachers yelled for students to get into classrooms, and people began to cry.
The principal, Jake Heibel, announced on the loudspeaker that the school was going into lockdown.
Saar Shah, 15, was working on a robotics assignment when he saw the flashing lights of police cars pull up to the school.
“I was thinking about this project,” Mr. Shah said. “I didn’t think my school was going to get shot up.”
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Even students who had been deeply involved in gun control activism after the Parkland shooting, like Mollie Davis, who handed out stickers to fellow students during last week’s walkout, were stunned to find themselves at the center of an issue that had seemed urgent but far away.
“I’m part of this now,” said Ms. Davis, 17, outside the nearby Leonardtown High School, where Great Mills students were taken to reunite with their parents. “It’s weird.”
The shooting here was all but certain to spur new questions about the best way to protect schools. Mr. Smith, the superintendent, said Great Mills High and other schools in the district did not have metal detectors, although officials had discussed the possibility of getting them after the shooting in Parkland.
“There is an associated cost related to that, as well as staff,” Mr. Smith said.
Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, described the shooting as a call to action. As states around the country considered new gun control and school safety measures in recent weeks, Mr. Hogan proposed putting $125 million into school protection and $50 million to pay for school resource officers. He complained that the State Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, had not passed legislation to do so.
“It’s outrageous to me that we haven’t taken action yet on something so important as school safety,” Mr. Hogan said.
Alexandra Hughes, chief of staff for Michael E. Busch, the speaker of the state House of Delegates, called the governor’s complaints “unfortunate” and said the Legislature had included $30 million for school safety measures. She said Mr. Hogan had filed the school safety measure late in the session, but that lawmakers had advanced other measures, including a ban on bump stocks, an “extreme risk” law that would allow judges to take weapons away from dangerous persons, and legislation to remove guns from domestic abusers.
Back in Great Mills, some students and parents said the shooting had pushed them to get involved in coming protests for stricter gun control. As Rayshawn Dickens, 38, went to pick up her 16-year-old daughter, Laquana, after the lockdown, she decided she would spend Saturday driving to Washington to join the “March for Our Lives” protest there.
“They’re not safe in school,” Ms. Dickens said, of her daughter and her friends. “It’s scary.”
