High School Shooting

High school shooting: 2 dead, shooter's chilling tweets

The final social media postings of the teenage gunman in a US school shooting offered a chilling forewarning of the carnage he was preparing to unleash.

The gunman, identified as the school's homecoming prince Jaylen Fryberg, left a series of tortured posts on Twitter in the months leading up to his attack in Washington state on Friday, hinting that a failed romance may have been the catalyst for the shooting that left one dead and three critically wounded.

The rampage ended when he took his own life.

'IT WON'T LAST'

In his final post on Twitter on Thursday, the night before he shot four of his classmates, Fryberg stated ominously: "It won't last...It'll never last...."

Fryberg opened fire in the cafeteria of his Washington state high school on Friday, killing a classmate and wounding at least four others before turning the gun on himself amid the chaos of students scrambling to safety, authorities said.

All of the victims were young people, and three were in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the head and in surgery, said Joanne Roberts, chief of medicine at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett.

The fourth wounded victim suffered less serious injuries in the gunfire at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, about 50 kilometres north of Seattle, and had been transferred to another hospital. Two of the victims were male and two female, hospital officials said.

Fryberg was a freshman, meaning he was in his first year of high school.

Social media posts painted a portrait of a teenager used to handling firearms, with one image on Instagram showing him brandishing a hunting rifle.

"Probably the best BirthDay present ever! I just love my parents!," he posted in a message accompanying the photo of him proudly holding the gun.

Thursday's Twitter posting was the last in a flurry which began on Monday with the cryptic: "Alright. You f***ing got me ... that broke me."

A day later he added: "It breaks me...It actually does...I know it seems like I'm sweating it off...But I'm not..And I never will be able to." The post was followed by a series of anguished emoticons.

Later on he added: "I should have listened...You were right...The whole time you were right..." A final post on Tuesday added: "If I just laid down."

Two months earlier, on August 20, Fryberg's fury had flared again on Twitter.

"Your gonna piss me off...And then some sh*ts gonna go down and I don't think you'll like it," he raged, following swiftly with "Your not gonna like what happens next."

Later the same day he added: "I hate that I can't live without you."

A month later, Fryberg appeared to be railing against a broken friendship. "Did you forget she was my girlfriend?" he wrote on September 18.

"Dude. She tells me everything. And now. I... hate you! Your no longer my brother.

Fryberg's elder brother Robert took to Twitter on Friday to tweet his grief.

"I don't wanna believe it," he wrote. "I'm gonna miss you little bro. Only god can judge you."

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WITNESS TALES FROM THE SHOOTING

Witnesses described Fryberg as a well-liked freshman and member of the school's wrestling and football teams. They said he walked into the school's cafeteria at lunchtime and opened fire at a table of classmates.

"I was eating ... I heard four gunshots and it was behind me. I saw a gun pointed at a table ... then I ran out of the exit," one student in the cafeteria, named only as Alex, told KIRO TV news.

"The table he went up to, he came up from behind and had a gun in his hand, and (he) fired about six bullets into the backs of them," student Jordan Luton told CNN. "They were his friends so it wasn't just random. People started screaming, going to ground and going for the nearest exit, so I hit the ground."

"He turned and looked at me and my girlfriend Harley and kind of gave us a smirk and turned around and shot more bullets outside."

"I was sitting at a table right next to the round table," another student reported on CNN. "I just got done eating my food and he was quiet, he was just sitting there.

"Then all of a sudden I see him stand up, pull something out of his pocket - at first I just thought it was someone just making a really loud noise, like a bag, like a big loud pop, until I heard four more after that and I just saw three kids just fall from the table, like they were falling to the ground dead.

"I jumped under the table as fast as I could and when it stopped, I looked back up and I saw he was trying to reload his gun, and when that happened I ran in the opposite direction and I was out of there as fast as I could."

Television footage also showed schoolchildren coming out of the sprawling campus in Marysville.

Local television stations reported on Friday that two students were being airlifted to a hospital.

The shooting was reported at about 10:45 am, local media said.

"My son has been on a wrestling team with him, he's a nice kid," school parent Jery Holston, told CNN of Fryberg. "I've seen him wrestle. I don't know what makes a kid snap like that.

"He had told me he seemed just fine yesterday. My son's pretty upset, you know."

US school shootings in 2014:

August 18: Two students were shot and killed at Marquette University. The gunman was later arrested.

June 10: A teen gunman armed with a rifle shot and killed a 14-year-old student and injured a teacher before he killed himself at a high school in a quiet Columbia River town in Oregon.

June 5: A gunman opened fire on a college campus in Washington state, killing a 19-year-old man and wounding two others.

May 23: Elliot Rodger, killed six people and wounds 13 others, in a small town near Santa Barbara, California. He stabbed three men in his apartment before driving to the University of California and killing three students.

January 14: A 12-year-old boy pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a bag and opened fire at a New Mexico middle school gym, seriously wounding two students, before a hero teacher talked him into putting down the weapon.

Police respond to shooting report at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Washington state http://t.co/Yi8emLmbM6 pic.twitter.com/Wcfx9kiMzG — NBC News (@NBCNews) October 24, 2014

Another view from @kiro7chopper, students moved to nearby church to meet parents http://t.co/YK2FfjfVZ0 pic.twitter.com/zHdDh5stfR —KIRO 7 (@KIRO7Seattle) October 24, 2014

One person in handcuffs being led away from #Marysville Pilchuck HS. http://t.co/pvFp8s386G pic.twitter.com/1O5ojBsmoY —Morgan Palmer (@MorganKIRO7) October 24, 2014

Students with hands over heads after being led out of #Marysville Pilchuck High School. Live http://t.co/pvFp8s386G pic.twitter.com/GV4T5OrVQm — Morgan Palmer (@MorganKIRO7) October 24, 2014

Article from www.stuff.co.nz