Student Is Fatally Shot at New Orleans School

Gunmen armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and a semiautomatic pistol opened fire in a New Orleans high school gymnasium Monday, killing one student and injuring three others in what police said may be a “retaliatory” attack.

Four suspects were arrested soon after the shooting at McDonough High School near the French Quarter. Orleans Parish school Supt. Anthony Amato said he did not know whether the suspects were students at the school.

Recent fights on a nearby street corner may have led to the shooting, Amato said, explaining: “We’re investigating to see if there’s any connection to something that happened outside the school about a week ago.”

According to New Orleans police officials, about 200 students were in the gym when four people, two of them armed, entered the building. Their apparent target -- 15-year-old Jonathan Williams -- was sitting on the bleachers when the gunmen confronted him. They shot repeatedly, striking him in the head and body. Three girls were hit by stray bullets, police said.

Other students in the gym ran screaming for the exits, while those inside classrooms were kept there by teachers following orders that blared through the intercom from the front office.

Williams died at the scene. The most seriously injured student, a 15-year-old girl, underwent surgery for bullet wounds to both legs. Two others, both 16-year-old girls, were treated for minor gunshot wounds and released. A fourth student was injured during the rush to escape.

Within minutes of the shooting, authorities secured the school grounds and ordered a lockdown while they searched for the assailants, who had slipped out of the gym.

Students described the getaway car as a red Oldsmobile. SWAT team members found the car and located three of the suspects in a home just blocks from the school. The fourth suspect was discovered hiding beneath another house.

Tyrone Crump, 17, Herbert Everett, 18, and Michelle Fulton, 17, were all booked on suspicion of first-degree murder. The suspect found under a house, Larry Moses, 19, was booked on suspicion of being an accessory, police said.

Warrants were issued for two more suspects late Monday, police said.

As parents rushed to pick up their children after the shooting, some vowed never to return.

“My children are not coming back here after this.... The school year is over,” one father told a local TV station.

Others wondered how an assault rifle could have been brought onto a campus equipped with metal detectors and patrolled by four armed security guards. Darlene Claiborn told Associated Press that her daughter used a cell phone to call from inside a classroom.

“How can this happen in a school?” Claiborn asked. “They have guards in there. They’re supposed to have security.”

Amato told reporters that schools can do only so much.