A new school shooting incident on Wednesday in North Carolina has left at least one student injured, officials said. The attack adds to a long list of gun violence targeting innocent civilians in the U.S.
Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem was on lockdown after the shooting but all other students were safe, according to Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Christina Howell.
Howell said the department was "actively seeking the suspect” but provided no further details immediately.
Police blocked roads to the school, which has an enrollment of more than 1,500 students, and numerous emergency vehicles were on the scene.
Parents frantic for information parked their cars on the sidewalks several blocks from the high school as police directed traffic away from campus.
Students and parents could be seen walking toward a nearby shopping center.
Christopher Johnson said his son told him that he heard the gunshots while in the school gym and students were told to hide because there was an active shooter on the campus.
"You see stuff like this in the media,” said Johnson, whose son was still at the school awaiting transportation to a pickup point.
"It’s scary to know that it actually reached out and touched you this time. My son’s not a victim but he’s part of this and he’ll probably remember this forever.”
The city tweeted that parents should not respond to the school but go to a nearby grocery store and await further instructions for picking up students.
The sheriff's office said other schools in the area were on lockdown as a precaution but no other shootings or injuries had been reported.
Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the incident, according to the agency’s Charlotte office.
In another incident in May, a sixth-grade student armed with a handgun injured three students in a middle school in Idaho.
