High school shooting in Taft, California leaves one student injured

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/10/taft-california-high-school-shooting

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A student was shot and wounded at a rural high school in California on Thursday and another student was taken into custody, officials said.

The shooting occurred about 9am at Taft Union High School, in a community of fewer than 10,000 people amidst oil and natural gas production fields in San Joaquin Valley, about 120 miles north-west of Los Angeles. The student who was shot was flown to a hospital in Bakersfield, said Ray Pruitt, spokesman for the Kern County sheriff's department. There was no immediate information on the victim's condition. Pruitt said the suspect was a student, and added that a shotgun was used in the attack.

Eric Coughran of the Kern County fire department told a local television station that another person had suffered some type of injuries in the incident, but had refused medical attention. Another TV station reported that it had received phone calls from people inside the school, who had hidden in closets. It was not immediately clear how many students are enrolled at the high school.

The Taft shooting came less than a month after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after killing his mother, and then shot himself.

That incident prompted President Barack Obama to promise new efforts to curb gun violence. Vice president Joe Biden, who was placed in charge of the initiative, said Tuesday in Washington that he would deliver new policy proposals to the president by next week.