The National School Walkout against gun violence was planned for this Friday at a central Florida high school, but was canceled because the plague of gun violence found its way onto the school’s campus.
According to VICE News, the shooting took place on Friday morning at Forest High School in suburban Ocala.
“At 8:39 a.m. this morning, the [school resource officer] for the high school heard what he believed to be a large, loud bang sound, a gunshot,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said during a press conference. “At 8:42 he was immediately on scene and engaged the activity that was going on.”
The shooter, a 19-year-old male who wasn’t a student at the school, shot a 17-year-old student in the ankle. The victim’s injuries were not life-threatening.
From VICE:
Friday’s National School Walkout was one in a series of student-led protests against gun violence, organized after the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, 270 miles south of Ocala, left 17 people dead. The walkout was planned to mark the 19th anniversary of the mass shooting at a high school in Columbine, Colorado, and organized by a high school student who grew up near the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, where a 2013 shooting left 26 people dead, including 20 young children.
Sheriff Woods said that just before the school shooting, he was responding a Thursday incident where two of his deputies were killed.
“My emotions are running rampant,” he said. “I’m angry, I’m sad, and I want to do something.”
Featured image via Flickr
