A 15-year-old high school boy, Kipland Kinkel, was expected to be arraigned yesterday on charges of murder and wounding following the latest school shooting incident, in Springfield, Oregon.
Police and explosive experts were still searching the teenager's home yesterday where the dead bodies of two people believed to be his parents have been found. There are fears there may be small bombs hidden in the building and neighbouring homes have been evacuated.
There is increasing criticism that the local police did not detain the boy after he had been arrested on Wednesday for a firearms violation at the school. He was later released to his parents, which police say is normal procedure.
Two students died, the second yesterday afternoon, and over 20 were injured when he allegedly opened fire in the school cafeteria. Some of the casualties were injured in the panic which followed as screaming students tried to take cover. The boy can be tried as an adult for murder but cannot receive the death penalty under Oregon law.
His parents, both Spanish language teachers at other schools, are said to have been strict on discipline in the home.
The school of 1,350 teenagers was closed yesterday for the start of the Memorial Day holiday weekend but many students turned up for counselling at another school.
Many parents are angry at both the school and the police over the treatment of the teenager before the shootings. His schoolmates said he used to talk about guns, bombs and torturing animals.
In middle school he was named in the yearbook as "Most Likely to Start World War III". He once gave a talk in his speech class on how to build a bomb.
He was arrested at the school on Wednesday for possession of a stolen hand-gun which he may have been trying to sell. He was suspended from school and could have been held by the police for 30 hours. The local police chief has defended the boy's release, saying that what happened would probably have occurred later.
Robert Nowell adds from Edinburgh:
Prayers for the victims of the latest school shooting in America were said by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh yesterday at the instigation of one of its observers from the US, the Rev Dan Bryant. His home town is Springfield, Oregon. There had been an "epidemic" of such shootings in the US said Mr Bryant, listing the catalogue of recent deaths. "More children have been killed by guns during the last 13 years than American soldiers during the 13 years of the Vietnam war," he said.
A 15-year-old girl was strung up in a tree and a friend clubbed her to death with a rock for threatening to reveal plans by a group of teenagers to run away to Florida, US police said in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Kimberly Jo Dotts's body was found by walkers on Tuesday in a clearing called Gallows Harbour, named after a hanging there in the 19th century.