Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante says the gunman who shot at Perry High School has been identified.
Several people were injured in a shooting at a high school in Perry, Iowa, United States, authorities said.
The shooting at Perry High School took place shortly after 7:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. GMT) and caused “multiple victims,” Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said at a press conference on Thursday.
He said the exact extent and number of injuries were still being determined.
A spokesperson for UnityPoint Health, which operates a nearby Des Moines hospital, confirmed that two gunshot victims had arrived there.
There were few students and teachers in the building at the time of the incident, Infante said.
The suspect in the shooting reportedly died from what investigators believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
At the briefing, Infante said the shooter had been identified but gave no further details.
Rachael Kares, 18, told The Associated Press that she was finishing practicing with a jazz band when she and her classmates heard what she described as four widely spaced gunshots.
“We all just jumped,” Kares said. “My band teacher looked at us and yelled ‘Run!’ “So we ran.”
Kares added that he ran across the soccer field with other schoolmates and heard people shouting, “Get out! Get out!” as more shots were heard.
Agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) responded to the scene and the U.S. attorney general was informed, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesman said.
Dirk Cavanaugh, mayor of Perry, said, “There are a lot of speculative figures floating around out there.”
“We still do not have confirmed figures of who was involved,” he added.
The attack came as Iowa is expected to hold its first statewide contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in 11 days.
Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who founded a biotechnology company, was scheduled to hold a rally in Perry but changed the event to an in-person prayer after reports of the shooting, a campaign spokesperson said.
