School Shooting in Colorado Leaves 1 Student Dead and 7 Injured

Other students were taken to Northridge Recreation Center in Highlands Ranch, where hundreds of anxious parents gathered to look for their children on Tuesday afternoon.“I heard a gunshot,” said Makai Dixon, 8, a second grader who had been training for this moment, with active shooter drills and lockdowns, since he was in kindergarten. “I’d never heard it before.”Makai’s parents said they joined thousands of others in rushing to the school as news blazed through this suburban community.“We’re more messed up than they are,” Makai’s mother, Rocio, said as they walked to their car.As wave after wave of classes were released from the rec center, high schoolers began walking out in tears, reaching for their parents’ arms and hugging their teachers.Tyler Rush, 17, a junior, said he had been on the second floor of the school, just above where the shooting occurred. He said it began during last period when the school announced a lockdown in the middle school portion of the building. He and his classmates gathered in a corner and turned out the lights. Some cried. Some sat paralyzed.He heard two gunshots.“I was in a state of shock,” he said.The shooting at the Highlands Ranch charter school is the latest at an educational institution, rattling communities nationwide for putting young people in mortal danger in places long considered safe havens. One week earlier, a man with a pistol shot six people on the last day of spring classes at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, killing two.

Read more from our friends at the NRA...