A search for a Texas high school student ended with the student in custody Wednesday afternoon after he allegedly started shooting inside the school. The video above shows the scene of the shooting.
Police identified the alleged shooter as 18-year-old Timothy George Simpkins.
The reported shooting happened Timberview High School in Arlington, which is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Hours later, the Arlington Police Department tweeted saying Simpkins had been taken into custody without incident and charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault with a gun.
At a news conference, Arlington Assistant Police Chief Kevin Kolbye said the high school shooting happened after a fight broke out. “Again I just want to re-emphasize that this is not a random act of violence. This is not somebody attacking our schools,” Kolbye said. “This is a student, we believe right now preliminarily, that it is a student that got into a fight and drew a weapon.”
Kolbye said two people were shot and two others had unspecified injuries. Three of the four high school shooting victims went to the hospital, with the other refusing medical treatment.
“Be having the victims in your thoughts and prayers. Please lift those folks up in your prayers. Some of those are already in surgery, so be thinking about those,” Aaron said. “Be thinking about our suspect and his family.”
Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. also shared reaction to the high school shooting.
“There have been far too many of these at far too many schools, and so we are grateful for the courage and the heroism of the first responders,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said at the Capitol. “And we are hopeful that that all of the students or individuals who may have been injured will will come through and survive.”
The incident comes just days after a shooting at a Houston charter school that injured an administrator. Texas’ deadliest school shooting occurred in May of 2018 when a then-17-year-old armed with a shotgun and a pistol opened fire at Santa Fe High School near Houston, killing 10 people, most of whom were students.