The 40th school shooting this year had rattled the country. On Tuesday, authorities revealed new details about the horrific school shooting that took place on Monday in St. Louis, Missouri, wounding seven students and naming the two deceased victims and suspect.
The two slain victims have been identified by the school district as 15-year-old student Alexzandria Bell and 61-year-old physical education teacher Jean Kuczka.
According to CNN, Kuczka’s daughter said the educator was getting ready to retire after a long, illustrious career teaching.
Witnesses say Kuczka died while she tried to protect her class, having had put herself between the gunman and the students.
Bell was an outgoing sophomore who loved to dance and was a member of her high school’s junior varsity dance team, called the Saint Louis Dazzling Diamonds, KSDK reported.
“She was the girl I loved to see and loved to hear from. No matter how I felt, I could always talk to her and it was alright. That was my baby,” Andre Bell, the the teen’s adoptive father said.
He said was looking forward to traveling to Los Angeles to celebrate her Sweet 16.
“But now we have to plan her funeral.”
Keisha Acres, Bell’s mother posted on Facebook, “My f—kin baby was just dancing. Her passion, not running the streets or skipping school. She was in class, and she still wasn’t safe. My mental is not ok.”
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The 19-year-old gunman, Orlando Harris, left behind a hand-written note offering his explanation to the senseless shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. Harris explained feelings of loneliness were “a perfect storm for a mass shooting,” the city’s police commissioner Michael Sack said.
“I don’t have any friends,” Sack continued to quote Harris. “I don’t have any family. I never had a girlfriend. I never had a social life. I’ve been an isolated loner my entire life.”
Harris had graduated from the school just last year.
Officials say he was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and what appeared to be more than 600 rounds of ammunition, strapped to his chest, some in a bag, and other magazines were found dumped in stairwells.
Authorities did not say how the gunman entered the building but police stressed that the school’s doors were locked. On Tuesday, an official said he did not enter the school through a checkpoint.
