Shooter de@d, two students critically injured as student opens fire on peers at Denver high school

A student shot two of his peers on Wednesday, September 10, at a suburban Denver high school before shooting himself and later dying, authorities said.

The handgun shooting was reported around 12:30 p.m. at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, about 30 miles west of Denver in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

Shots were fired both inside and outside the school building.

Law enforcement officers who responded found the shooter within five minutes of arriving, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said.

None of the law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting fired any shots, Kelley said.

More than 100 police officers from the surrounding area rushed to the school to try to help, Kelley said.

The teens were originally listed in critical condition, St. Anthony Hospital CEO Kevin Cullinan said. Their ages were not released.

By early evening, one teen was in stable condition with what Dr. Brian Blackwood, the hospital’s trauma director, described as non-life threatening injuries.

After the shooting, parents gathered outside a nearby elementary school waiting to reunite with their children.

Eighteen students who fled from the shooting took shelter at a home just down the road, after an initial group of them pounded on the door asking for help, resident Don Cygan told Denver’s KUSA-TV.

One student said he heard gunshots while in the school’s cafeteria and ran out of the school, Cygan said.

Cygan, a retired educator familiar with lockdown trainings to prepare for possible shootings, said he took down the names of all the students and the names of the parents who later arrived there to pick them up. His wife, a retired nurse, was able to calm the teens down and treat them for shock, he said.