The Shooting At Thurston High School
On May 21, Kinkel drove his mother's Ford Explorer to the high school. He wore a trench coat to hide the five weapons he carried: two hunting knives, a 9mm Glock 19 pistol, a Ruger .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle, and a .22-caliber Ruger MK II pistol. He was carrying 1,127 rounds of ammunition.
He parked on North 61st Street, two blocks from the school, then jogged to the campus, entered the patio area and fired two shots, one fatally wounding Ben Walker and the other wounding Ryan Atteberry. Kinkel went to the cafeteria and, walking across it, fired the remaining 48 rounds from his rifle, wounding 24 students and killing 17-year-old Mikael Nickolauson. Kinkel fired a total of 50 rounds, accumulating 37 hits, and two fatalities.
When Kinkel's rifle ran out of ammunition and he began to reload, wounded student Jacob Ryker tackled him, assisted by several other students. Kinkel drew the Glock and fired one shot before he was disarmed, injuring Ryker again as well as another student. The students restrained Kinkel until the police arrived and arrested him. A total of seven students were involved in subduing and disarming Kinkel.
Nickolauson died at the scene; Walker died after being transported to the hospital and kept on life support until his parents arrived. The other students, including Ryker, were also taken to the hospital with a variety of wounds. Ryker had a perforated lung, but he made a full recovery.
Read more about this topic: Kip Kinkel
Famous quotes containing the words high school, shooting, high and/or school:
“When I was in high school I thought a vocation was a particular calling. Here’s a voice: “Come, follow me.” My idea of a calling now is not: “Come.” It’s like what I’m doing right now, not what I’m going to be. Life is a calling.”
—Rebecca Sweeney (b. 1938)
“One ... aspect of the case for World War II is that while it was still a shooting affair it taught us survivors a great deal about daily living which is valuable to us now that it is, ethically at least, a question of cold weapons and hot words.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“The high wore away, the chromed skeleton corroding hourly, flesh growing solid, the drug-flesh replaced with the meat of his life. He couldn’t think. He liked that very much, to be conscious and unable to think.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“He had first discovered a propensity for savagery in the acrid lavatories of a minor English public school where he used to press the heads of the new boys into the ceramic bowl and pull the flush upon them to drown their gurgling protests.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)