By Peter Szekely
(Reuters) -Authorities arrested an 18-year-old male in connection with a Texas high school shooting that left four people injured after a fight broke out in a classroom on Wednesday morning, police said.
The suspect, who fled the Timberview High School in Arlington, after the shooting, was taken into custody after a brief manhunt and will be charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said.
At least two of the four injured people, one of whom did not require hospitalization, suffered gunshot wounds, police said. One of the victims remains in critical condition.
"What we believe happened, preliminarily, is that there was a fight between a student and another individual in a class and a gun was used, and there are four victims," Arlington Assistant Police Chief Kevin Kolbye told reporters
The incident, first reported at about 9:15 a.m. local time, on the second floor of the school, prompted a lockdown and a massive police response to secure the building before students were placed on buses and taken off the campus.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said its agents were also on the scene.
Timberview is part of Mansfield Independent School District, a large district in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area comprised of 49 schools serving more than 35,000 students.
Kolbye said two officers from the Mansfield Police Department were based in the school and immediately responded.
So far this year, there have been at least 101 incidents involving gunfire on U.S. school grounds, resulting in 21 deaths and 56 injuries, according to Everytown for Gun Safety https://everytownresearch.org/maps/gunfire-on-school-grounds, a gun violence prevention organization.
The group recorded at least 96 such incidents, resulting in 23 deaths and 43 injuries, in 2020.