Taft high school shooting: Shooter targeted bullies
The Taft High School shooting had two intended victims, reported the sheriff in a press conference. Both were students that the shooter felt had bullied him during the previous year.
Officials cordon off an area outside San Joaquin Valley high school in Taft, Calif. Authorities said a student was shot and wounded and another student was taken into custody.
Doug Keeler / Taft Midway Driller / AP
TAFT, Calif.
Authorities say a boy who fired on classmates and wounded one at a rural California high school had planned the attack and targeted students he felt had bullied him for more than a year.
Kern County sheriff Donny Youngblood said at a news conference Thursday night that the 16-year-old used a shotgun that belonged to his brother and went to bed Wednesday night with a plan to shoot two fellow students.
Youngblood says surveillance video shows the boy trying to conceal the gun as he nervously enters Taft Union High School through a side entrance after school had started Thursday morning.
The boy entered his classroom, shot and critically injured one student, then fired on others before a teacher and another staff member talked him into surrendering.