May 24 (UPI) — One student is in custody after another student was killed Wednesday morning in a shooting near a special education school in Pittsburgh.
It was the second fatal shooting there in 16 months.
According to Pittsburgh Police Commander Rich Ford, the victim at Pittsburgh’s Oliver Citywide Academy was given aid by responding officers but died later at a hospital.
“Upon their arrival they found a victim shot multiple times outside Oliver Citywide Academy’s front entrance,” a police statement said. ” Officers administered CPR and first aid and requested medics. Officers also spotted a male running from scene with a firearm. That male armed with a firearm was taken into custody without further incident and a firearm was recovered.”
Police said both the victim and the suspect were juveniles and current students at Oliver Academy.
“The victim was transported to local hospital in critical condition but later died at the hospital. The suspect was transported to headquarters,” the police statement said.
“As a society, we have to reclaim our children, and we have to begin putting our children first. We have cultivated a culture of violence and death, celebrated guns, and glorified shooting,” Mayor Ed Gainey said in a statement on Twitter. “We have failed as a country to stop the proliferation of guns and it is far too easy for a young person to get those guns and retaliate in the way our culture has glorified it.”
He asked Pittsburgh to join him in prayer “for family, friends and the entire Oliver Citywide Academy community as they are once again mourning a young life taken by gunfire.”
Gainey’s statement thanked the police for a quick response and said his office is working with community violence intervention teams to provide help and support to students.
Ford said, “We believe, based on the information that we have and the video we’ve been able to see, that we have the actor in custody and there’s no potential threat to the other schools.”
