Officer shoots 2 juveniles after car strikes girl at Western High School
A school police officer shot two juveniles after their car struck a student at Western High School on Tuesday afternoon, police said.
Clark County School District Police Department Lt. Bryan Zink said officers responded at 2:15 p.m. after a report of a fight and a “vehicle with a weapon” near the school, 4601 W. Bonanza Road. Officers were in the east parking lot around dismissal time when a car entered the lot “at a high rate of speed.” Officers ordered the driver to stop, but the car made a U-turn, struck a female student and then continued toward officers, Zink said, adding that the girl was not seriously injured.
An officer shot at the car, which then left the parking lot. Zink said family members of the two juveniles in the car took one of them to University Medical Center and the other to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Neither had life-threatening injures, he said.
Briefing on shooting near Western High School https://t.co/KT0eNRSUJT
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He said the juveniles were not students at Western, though one was possibly “assigned to Western.”
Zink said the investigation is ongoing and he did not know what charges the juveniles would face. He said the Metropolitan Police Department had possession of the car.
Liu Velasquez, a 10th grader at Western, said school gets out at 2:11 p.m. on Tuesdays. At 2:15, he heard what sounded like a bus tire popping.
“But then I heard it repeatedly and I was just like, ‘Oh, shoot,’ ” Velasquez said.
He and other students ran back into the school after hearing the shots, and he said he saw some students fall down trying to get back inside.
“It was kind of a mess, and it kind of got a bit scary,” Velasquez said.
The school district sent an email to parents saying police responded to an “incident” near the campus at dismissal that might delay some students on their way home. There were no other details provided to parents.
Contact David Wilson at dwilson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @davidwilson_RJ on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Sabrina Schnur contributed to this report.
