Calif. high school shooting leaves one injured, one in custody

The shooting occurred about 9 a.m. at Taft Union High School, in community of fewer than 10,000 people amidst oil and natural gas production fields in San Joaquin Valley, northwest of Los Angeles.

|
Michael Long/The Taft Independent/Reuters
Law enforcement officers wearing FBI vests arrive on the scene after a shooting at Taft Union High School in Taft, California January 10. Gunfire erupted on Thursday at a California high school in inland Kern County.

A student was shot and wounded at a rural high school Thursday and another student was taken into custody, officials said.

The shooting occurred about 9 a.m. at Taft Union High School, in community of fewer than 10,000 people amidst oil and natural gas production fields in San Joaquin Valley, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

The student who was shot was flown to a hospital in Bakersfield, said Ray Pruitt, spokesman for the Kern County Sheriff's Department. There was no immediate word on the victim's condition.

Pruitt said the suspect is a student, and a shotgun was used in the attack.

Kern County Fire Department Eric Coughran told KBAK-TV that another person suffered some type of injuries in the incident but refused medical attention.

KERO-TV Bakersfield reported that the station received phone calls from people inside the school who hid in closets.

It was not immediately clear how many students are enrolled at the high school.

The Taft shooting came less than a month after a gunman massacred 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, then killed himself.

That shooting prompted President Barack Obama to promise new efforts to curb gun violence. Vice President Joe Biden, who was placed in charge of the initiative, said Tuesday in Washington that he would deliver new policy proposals to the president by next week.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Calif. high school shooting leaves one injured, one in custody
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0110/Calif.-high-school-shooting-leaves-one-injured-one-in-custody
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe