6 people shot, 2 with life-threatening injuries, at Oakland school campus

Six adults were wounded in a shooting Wednesday afternoon at an Oakland school campus, with two suffering life-threatening injuries, according to local officials.

The two with the most serious injuries were listed as critical but stable at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, the county’s main trauma hospital, while a third victim was listed as stable, according to Alameda Health System officials.

The three others injured were either released or are soon to be released from a different hospital, Oakland Assistant Police Chief Darren Allison said at a news briefing. All six victims were 18 or older and had some “affiliation with the school,” but Allison did not say whether they were students or staff.

The King Estate campus on Fontaine Street, where the shooting occurred, is home to multiple schools with students from grades 6-12 onsite. Police found the victims, all of whom were suffering from gunshot wounds, just before 1 p.m.

No suspects have been identified, Allison said, adding, “We are currently and actively looking for one shooter, although there may be other individuals involved.”

The shooting follows a particularly violent week for Oakland and comes just one day after the police chief pledged an “all-hands-on-deck” response to the city’s gun violence.

Law enforcement officers on the scene after a shooting at an Oakland school campus Wednesday.

(Ray Chavez / Bay Area News Group)

Allison said the shooting occurred in the Rudsdale High School portion of the campus, but he did not clarify whether shots were fired inside or outside the school.

Rudsdale provides an alternative educational experience for mostly immigrant students between the ages of 16 and 21, according to the school’s website. Also on the campus is the Bay Area Technology School, a public charter school for grades 6-12, and the Sojourner Truth Independent Study school, which operates an online learning program for K-12 students.

Because of its virtual setup, no students from Sojourner Truth were on campus Wednesday, according to a statement from the Oakland Unified School District. John Sasaki, a district spokesperson, did not say whether staff members were present in the school’s building, but he said it was the location of the school’s headquarters.

The Oakland Academy of Knowledge, an elementary school, is also near the King Estate campus, but Sasaki said the shooting did not “have anything to do with that elementary school.”

Oakland City Councilmember Loren Taylor said the incident “hits close to home.”

“Our schools are supposed to be a place of uplifting, empowering,” Taylor told ABC7 News, “… not [a place] to witness tragedies like this.”

Parents were rushing to the campus Wednesday afternoon to reunite with their children after news of the shooting broke. Oakland Police Capt. Casey Johnson asked that witnesses or people with video of the shooting contact the agency.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf lambasted the gun violence in a post on Twitter. “The unbridled access to firearms in our country is inexcusable,” she said.

A tweet from the governor’s office called the shooting “a horrifying act of violence that has grown too familiar.”

“Yet again, our kids were in the crossfire. This cannot continue — gun violence has taken too much from our communities.”

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Less than 24 hours before the shooting, Oakland Police Chief LeRonne L. Armstrong addressed the community after eight people were killed in the city’s deadliest week this year, according to the Police Department. He said the agency was “reorganizing and redeploying additional officers” to better respond to shootings, noting that a majority of the incidents were tied to group and gang violence.

“We are going all-hands-on-deck to address gun violence in the city of Oakland,” Armstrong said.

“This has been a rough year in Oakland,” Sasaki, the Oakland Unified spokesperson, said at a news conference. “But it doesn’t define us; it doesn’t define the school district and it doesn’t define the city.”

Late last month, a 13-year-old student at Madison Park Academy was accidentally shot by another student. The victim survived, and the other student was charged.

“This cannot keep happening in our city,” Sasaki said. “Everybody needs to do everything we can to ensure that our kids are loved and supported.”

Oakland schools have what Sasaki called “culture keepers,” unarmed school staffers who support the students “to ensure that they stay safe on our campuses.”

The culture keepers were on campus Wednesday, but it was unclear how many.