The Florida School Shooting Was the 18th School Shooting of the Year. And It's Only February
Tehran(KNA) : At least 17 students at a Florida high school were killed after a gunman opened fire on them with an automatic rifle, in one of the deadliest school shootings on record in the US.
Wednesday's school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was the 18th school shooting of 2018 - a year that's not even two months old.
While many of these incidents - including the most recent before Wednesday's shooting, one on Feb. 8 at New York City's Metropolitan High School - did not result in any fatalities or injuries, schools nationwide have been rocked by gun violence in recent days. There have been school shootings in 13 states so far this year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit that advocates for gun control. Texas, California and Michigan have each seen at least two school shootings.
On Jan. 23 in Kentucky, a 15-year-old student killed two of his peers and injured almost two dozen others. Just the day before, a 15-year-old girl was wounded in a shooting in Texas.
At least 17 people were killed in the shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday, according to the Broward County Sheriff's office. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson told MSNBC he had gotten word of "a number of fatalities" from the school superintendent. A suspect in the Florida shooting has been identified as Nikolas Cruz, the Associated Press reports. The 19-year-old suspect is not a current student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and has been taken into custody, according to the sheriff's office.
President Donald Trump offered "prayers and condolences" in the wake of the Florida shooting, tweeting that "no child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school."
Source: Time