The Dallas County Sheriff says they’ve identified the person who fired several shots inside Perry High School about 15 minutes before school was to start this morning. Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante spoke with reporters at the scene shortly after 10 o’clock. He there are multiple victims.
“We’re still unclear exactly how many are injured or what the extent of those are, but we’re working on that right now,” Infante said. “There is no further danger to the public. The community is safe. We’re just not working backwards, trying to figure out everything that happened and make notifications.” The sheriff says an officer was at the scene within seven minutes after the emergency call that there was an active shooter in the school.
“This happened at approximately 7:37 this morning,” Infante said. ” School didn’t start yet, luckily, so there was very few students and faculty in the building.”
Raccoon Valley Radio interviewed Perry High School Teacher Lori Meinecke, who said at about 7:40 a.m. she heard about six to seven gunshots followed by the voices of several school coaches encouraging everyone to evacuate the area. One of the hospitals in Des Moines has confirmed its medical helicopter and ambulances were dispatched to Perry.
The Iowa DCI says another update will be given this afternoon.
During this morning’s news conference, Infante was asked if the shooter had been identified.
“Yes,” he replied.
“What’s their current status?” a reporter asked.
“We’ll get to that later on this afternoon,” Infante said and he told reporters he “can’t firm” if the shooter was a student at the school.
(By Coltrain Carlson of Raccoon Valley Radio, Perrry, and Natalie Krebs of Iowa Public Radio)