(CNN) — “This is a student at Sparks Middle School. Can you please send police out here? There’s a kid with a gun.”
“Somebody brought a gun to school. They shot a teacher.”
“I got a kid down who’s been shot.”
As police tried to piece together how and why a seventh-grader shot and killed a teacher and wounded two other students at his Nevada school, recordings of the first calls to police captured the horror and chaos he unleashed.
The 12-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, began by shooting a fellow student in the shoulder, police said Tuesday. Then he turned his gun on math teacher Mike Landsberry before shooting a second student in the abdomen, Washoe County School District Police Chief Mike Mieras said.
After that, he shot himself to death with his pistol, which Sparks Deputy Police Chief Tom Miller identified as a Ruger 9mm semiautomatic.
“We got a guy with a gun. He’s down from a head shot wound. Could be our shooter,” one of the responding officers is heard telling dispatchers on the 911 calls. “He’s out there on the basketball court.”
Landsberry walked toward the shooter on a playground basketball court after the first student was hit, saving lives, according to authorities.
“Mr. Landsberry’s heroic actions, by stepping toward the shooter, allowed time for other students in the playground area to flee,” Mieras said.
Despite previous reports indicating the two wounded students had been shot inside the school building, all the shots were fired outside, police said.
Miller, who said earlier on CNN’s “New Day” that it wasn’t yet clear if the boy was targeting specific people, declined to identify the boy out of respect for his family.
“They are grieving parents and are going through” a challenging, difficult time, Miller said.
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