It’s been a tense day in the small, Far West Texas town of Alpine after a shooting at the high school there and multiple bomb threats lodged in different places throughout the days.
Authorities in Brewster County say a 14-year-old female freshman shot and injured another female student at Alpine High School before turning the gun on herself.
Neither the identity of the shooter nor the victim have been released, but authorities do not believe the victim’s injuries are life-threatening.
Alpine Police Chief Russell Scown talked to reporters about how the scene unfolded Thursday morning.
“And we didn’t even know that the young lady that was deceased was our shooter - we thought we still had an active shooter out there,” Scown said.
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson said the shooting “could’ve been much worse,” though he didn’t elaborate. Authorities say they’ll be investigating and possibly release more information as to a motive in the coming days.
The shooting investigation was thrown into chaos through the day as authorities later received multiple bomb threats at different locations across Alpine and one in the neighboring town of Marathon, Texas.
Sheriff Dodson said officers were forced to treat those as credible, though he described them as pranks. He has vowed to find and prosecute the anonymous male caller responsible.
“He is priority right now, because of what he’s done to our community, what he’s done to law enforcement. I mean the money he has cost this area,” Dodson said.
The threats forced the campus of Sul Ross State University to go into lockdown, though that campus and all Alpine schools were later cleared.