TROUTDALE, Oregon (AP) — A shooter is dead at a US high school and the situation has stabilized, police said.
The Multnomah County sheriff’s office said there were reports of shots fired about 8 a.m. Tuesday near Portland, Oregon.
TV news showed students being led from the high school in the town of Troutdale with their hands on their heads.
Shots were reported shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday.
Students inside the school were texting with their parents. A parent interviewed on TV said she had heard from her son inside the school that he was OK, but she was worried.
Police told parents to go to a nearby parking lot to meet with their sons and daughters as they evacuated the school.
Shootings at schools and college campuses in the U.S., where there generally is easy access to guns, are an increasingly common occurrence.
Last week, a lone gunman entered a small university in Seattle shot and killed one person and injured two. The 26-year-old suspect is being held without bail. Police said he had no connection to the university, but apparently was planning to kill as many people as he could before killing himself.
Gun control is a fiercely divisive issue in the United States, where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, alongside such basic rights as free speech and freedom of religion.
President Barack Obama’s plan for broader background checks on gun purchases, along with proposals for a ban on military-style assault rifles and limits on ammunition capacity, failed last year in Congress.
This despite the December 2012 killings of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that shocked the nation.
