3 wounded as gunfire erupts during argument at Texas college

 

Dozens of heavily armed officers swarmed Lone Star College around 12:50 p.m. Students were seen fleeing buildings while others huddled in classrooms.

Gunshots rang out at a Houston community college on Tuesday, leaving a maintenance worker severely wounded and sparking panic across campus in what was the fifth school shooting in six weeks.
Two men were arguing near the library of Lone Star College in north Houston around 12:50 p.m. when one of the men pulled a handgun and fired off several shots, acting Harris County Sheriff Maj. Armando Tello said during a news conference.
A maintenance worker was caught in the crossfire and stuck by a bullet in the leg. The victim, who is in his mid-50s, was in stable condition at Ben Taub General Hospital, medical officials said.
The two men involved in the altercation were in police custody, and both were hurt. A law enforcement official told KHOU-TV that one of the men shot the other man he was arguing with several times and then accidentally shot himself in the buttocks. The man shot multiple times is in critical condition at a local hospital. In addition, a woman with a student ID suffered a "medical condition" during the stressful incident, Tello said.

An aerial view of one of the victims of the school shooting at Lone Star College.

The gunshots elicited widespread panic across the busy college campus, with students rushing from buildings and huddling for safety in classrooms.
"All you could hear was like five or six shots, and we saw everybody running," said student Jose Del Reyes, who was studying in the library. "People were running and screaming. We tried to get out, but nobody would let us out," he said. "We were just so scared," he said.
Student Mark Zaragosa said he had just come out of an EMT class when he saw two people bleeding from gunshot wounds on the normally quiet campus. Cops had not yet arrived.

“One gentleman had a gunshot to the knee and the (other) actually had an entry wound to the lower buttocks area,” Zaragosa told KHOU.

 

Keisha Cohn, 27, who also is studying to be a paramedic, said she heard “no less than five” shots and started running. She holed up in the campus learning center alongside other people fearing for their lives.

Daniel Flores, 19, described the barrage as sounding “like someone was kicking a door.”

The scene inside Lone Star College after word of shots fired on campus.

What sparked the argument between the two men was still unclear, but "one individual did have a student identification," Tello said.
Police would not say whether the incident was gang related.
Dozens of heavily armed officers swarmed the campus and barricaded streets in the adjoining neighborhood.
"This hits close to home," a frantic witness told KTRK-TV. "What you see on TV is real ... you realize it could be me," she said.

In this frame grab provided by KPRC Houston, an unidentified person is transported by emergency personnel at Lone Star College on Tuesday in Houston.

School officials said the school was placed on lockdown, issuing an alert that read, "Students, Faculty and Staff are advised to take immediate shelter where you are. Do not enter the campus until notified further."
Several students told KTRK they did not receive a text message or email about an emergency on campus and instead relied on word of mouth from faculty and classmates.
Four nearby grade schools were also placed on lockdown.
While the Texas Legislature is considering a plan to allow guns on college campuses, Lone Star College campuses are actually gun-free zones, according to Richard Carpenter, chancellor of the Lone Star College System, which has an enrollment of 90,000 students and six college campuses.
The shooting was the fifth on a school campus in recent weeks. On Dec. 14, a gunman killed 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. A month later, a student brought a shotgun into Taft Union High School in Taft, Calif., shooting a student and grazing his teacher. On Jan. 15, two people were shot dead in the parking lot at Hazard Community and Technical College in Eastern Kentucky. The same day, a part-time student at Stevens Institute of Business & Arts in St. Louis shot the school's financial aid director.
Despite the recent onslaught of violence, the Texas attorney general invited New Yorkers last week to move to Texas — with their guns — because the state is so welcoming of weaponry.

Two people struck by gunfire were rushed into surgery, law enforcement says.

Three people were wounded.

Police comb the campus.