PERRY, IOWA (WHO) — A Perry High School student said he heard a “couple of bangs” that he thought were coming from band practice on Thursday morning. Even after he was told it was a shooting, he assumed it was a prank – until he saw officers with guns drawn.
Authorities say a 17-year-old opened fire at the small-town high school on the first day of school after the winter break, killing a sixth-grader and wounding five others as students barricaded in offices and fled in panic.
The call came in as an active shooter at 7:37 a.m.
“I just heard a couple of bangs, not really gunshots,” said sophomore Carlos Monzon. “They were not very loud. We saw a bunch of kids running and we asked what happened because we were kind of concerned. We thought it was just for band or something messing around.”
“One of my girlfriends’ friends said it was a shooting and there was a shooter with a gun,” Monzon continued. “We got scared but we thought it was a prank or something — people like to prank about that stuff these days. That’s when a bunch of cops started coming and we knew it was serious and we were told to leave.”
Officers arrived seven minutes after the shooting was reported.
“One of our teachers started screaming at us – that’s when we knew it was serious. He was telling us to ‘leave, leave, leave,'” Monzon said.
Zander Shelley, 15, was in a hallway waiting for the school day to start when he heard the gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father, Kevin Shelley. Zander was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7:36 a.m.
Kevin Shelley, who drives a garbage truck, told his boss he had to run. “It was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life,” he said.
Rachael Kares, an 18-year-old senior, was wrapping up jazz band practice when she and her bandmates heard what she described as four gunshots, spaced apart.
“We all just jumped,” Kares said. “My band teacher looked at us and yelled, ‘Run!’ So we ran.”
Kares and many others from the school ran out past the football field, as she heard people yelling, “Get out! Get out!” She said she heard additional shots as she ran, but didn’t know how many. She was more concerned about getting home to her 3-year-old son.
“At that moment I didn’t care about anything except getting out because I had to get home with my son,” she said.
Erica Jolliff said that her daughter, a ninth grader, reported getting rushed from the school grounds at 7:45 am. Distraught, Jolliff was still looking for her son Amir, a sixth grader, one hour later.
“I just want to know that he’s safe and OK,” Jolliff said. “They won’t tell me nothing.”
Jasmine Augustine, 18, was at the high school shortly after everything happened Thursday morning. She said she was dropping off a friend at the high school and his brother, who goes to the town’s elementary school about a mile away.
“I was at Casey’s convenience store and saw one car speed by. I thought it was just someone getting pulled over,” she said.
Augustine said that when she pulled in at the high school, someone told her there was an active shooter. She added, “Then we hurried up and left.”
“After that, there’s just tons and tons and tons of cops who came,” said Augustine, whose sister attends the high school but wasn’t near what happened. Jasmine and her dad picked up her sister from the armory afterward.
FBI agents from the Omaha-Des Moines office were on the scene to help with the investigation led by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
Law enforcement confirmed the shooter was dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.