A teenager shot and wounded two children and a teacher at an elementary school in South Carolina before being taken into custody on Wednesday, US police have said.
The shooting happened in the early afternoon at Townville Elementary School in Anderson County, located near the Georgia state line, about 160km northeast of Atlanta.
The dead body of an adult was found on a dirt road near the school, Anderson County coroner Greg Shore told the Anderson Independent Mail, adding that the death appeared to be related to the shooting.
Shore said the two students did not appear to have life-threatening injuries. Both children are six-years-old, according to the Independent Mail.
The US has long been plagued by shootings at schools and colleges, which has fuelled the debate about access to guns in the US.
Armed officers guarded students as they were evacuated from the school and taken by bus to a nearby church, local media said.
Television images showed police swarming the school, with some officers on the roof while others moved around the building.
A mother whose daughter is in kindergarten at Townville Elementary told WYFF news that she panicked after getting word of the shooting.
She described a scene of scared and crying children.
“I‘m just scared,” the woman, who was not identified, said through tears as she was interviewed by the station. “I don’t even want her to go to school now.“
Airlifted
The two injured students were airlifted to the hospital and the teacher was driven there by ambulance, said Taylor Jones, deputy chief of the Anderson County sheriff’s office.
One child was flown to Greenville Memorial Hospital’s emergency trauma centre, local health system spokeswoman Sandy Dees said.
The other child and one adult were taken to AnMed Health Medical Centre, said spokeswoman Juana Slade.
Both are in good condition, Ms Slade said.
Further details were not immediately available.
About 280 students attend the school, according to online real estate database company Zillow.
In 2012, a gunman shot dead 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The deadliest mass school shooting in the US was in 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University.
Earlier this month, a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded a fellow student at a rural Texas high school and then died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Reuters