St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron confirmed during a Tuesday press conference that one male student and one female student were injured when a shooter opened fire inside Great Mills High School, Maryland. The sheriff said “our school resource officer, who was stationed inside the school, was alerted to the event and the shots being fired.”
The sheriff continued:
“He pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter. He fired a round at the shooter. Simultaneously the shooter fired a round as well. In the hours to come, the days to come through detailed investigation, we will be able to determine if our school resource officer’s round struck the shooter. The school resource officer is uninjured and was not struck by any fire am projectile.”
The sheriff told reporters that the shooter died as a result of a gunshot wound and the school has since been evacuated.
Armed officers and teachers inside schools is among one of the more contentious issues in the national debate on gun violence.
President Trump has repeatedly called for arming up to 20 percent of school staff members in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead. In that shooting, the officer stationed at the school refused to engage the shooter.