FAIRMOUNT, N.D. (AP) - A Fairmount high school student shot himself in front of his classmates in an apparent suicide attempt Thursday morning, school officials said.
The student, whose name, age and condition were not immediately released, shot himself at around 8:30 a.m. and didn't threaten anyone else at the small K-12 school, Principal Jay Townsend said. The roughly 110 students were ordered to the library after the shooting and the school was locked down for about an hour before officials cancelled classes for the day and allowed parents to retrieve their children, he said.
The boy was coherent when he was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Breckenridge, Minn., which is 15 miles away, Townsend said. The hospital declined to release any information about the boy because he's a minor.
Mayor Jon Nelk, who is also a firefighter and whose daughter is a freshman at the school, called it "a tragic day" for the community of about 370 residents.
"It's going to shake up the community for a long time," he said. "The city's prayers and thoughts go out to the young man and his family and friends."
Nelk said his daughter was not in the room where the freshman boy shot himself, but that "all of the kids in that area of the school, in that grade, were very, very shook up."
Many parents went through similar emotions, Nelk said.
"When I picked my daughter up there were a lot of parents picking up their kids," he said. "Most of the parents were scared, not knowing exactly what happened, just hearing that there was a shooting."