Southland Youth Killed After Shootings at Arizona Campus

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

Student 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 Department 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.

Dr. Philip Keen, medical examiner for Yavapai County, said that Huskey was believed to be from Newport Beach.

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.

A sheriff’s spokesman said the youth walked up to Thayer’s campus bungalow 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. He then ran toward a barn and fired several shotgun blasts in the direction of Winfield. Authorities did not know where Huskey got the shotgun.

When 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 smalls groups sobbing after the incident.

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

Sheriff’s Lt. Bill 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, quote, working up to his capacity. . . . A B-plus student who was making Cs.”