Student Killed at Private School After Shooting 3

A student from Southern California went on a shooting spree at the private Orme School, wounding an administrator and two teachers before he was shot to death after pointing a weapon at sheriff’s deputies, authorities said Saturday.

Jarrett Huskey, 17, had been found drinking beer Friday night and “realized he would be seriously disciplined by his father” and suspended for a week, Charlie Orme, the school’s headmaster, said. “He totally lost his rational faculties.”

Jack Thayer, 40, the school’s director of admissions and marketing, suffered two gunshot wounds in the stomach, Yavapai County sheriff’s deputies said. He was hospitalized in Phoenix, 75 miles to the south. Authorities said he was in critical condition and had lost a kidney, but is expected to survive.

Gary Winfield, 43, a computer teacher, was released after treatment at a Prescott hospital for shotgun pellet wounds.

Authorities said a third teacher, Laurie Smith, 25, was hit by stray pellets but was not seriously injured. Smith, who came outside to see what was happening, was standing about 65 yards away when hit by stray pellets from Huskey’s shotgun.

From Newport Beach

Administrators at Orme School, a nationally known private secondary school, declined to identify Huskey’s hometown, but Dr. Philip Keen, medical examiner for Yavapai County, said from his Prescott office that Huskey was believed to be from Newport Beach. School friends of Huskey also said he was from Newport Beach, the Arizona Republic reported in a story prepared for publication today.

Authorities said Huskey went to the home of Richard Kinney, who supervises the school’s shooting range, and obtained a .45-caliber pistol by saying he had forgotten to unload it after target practice.

Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Maughan said the youth walked up to Thayer’s campus bungalow at about 8:30 p.m. Friday and when the administrator answered the door, Huskey shoved the weapon into his stomach and pulled the trigger.

Huskey then ran through the campus and spent 15 minutes firing shots in the air before running toward a barn and firing several shotgun blasts in the direction of Winfield. Authorities did not know where Huskey got the shotgun.

Lt. Maughan said “there were gun shells all over.”

Fired at Officers

When sheriff’s deputies confronted Huskey, the youth raised the shotgun at them and fired a shot. The officers returned fire, killing him.

Many of the 180 students at the exclusive rural college preparatory school stood in small groups, sobbing, after the incident.

“They’re very disturbed,” said Orme, the school’s headmaster. “It’s an unbelievable tragedy.”

Huskey was to be captain of next year’s football team and was a member of the wrestling team, school officials said. They described him as an experienced hunter and an avid outdoorsman. Friends said he was not a troublemaker.

Maughan said no clear-cut motive could be determined for the outburst. Thayer and Winfield were not the ones who caught Huskey drinking, he said.

He was “a genuinely friendly young man and a good athlete,” Orme said of Huskey. “A very able boy, who wasn’t working up to his capacity . . . a B-plus student who was making Cs.”

The 200-acre rural boarding school, surrounded by a 40,000-acre ranch, is noted for its strict academic standards. Annual tuition costs range from $13,000 to $16,000 per academic year.