Teenager fatally shoots a female student and himself at Antioch High School in Nashville, police say

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A female student was killed and another student was wounded Wednesday in a shooting at a Nashville high school cafeteria, police said.

The 17-year-old shooter, who was also a student at Antioch High School, shot and killed himself, Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said at a news conference.

The student injured in the shooting was given a graze, Aaron said.

A spokesperson for Vanderbilt University Medical Center told TV station News 2 that another student was taken to Vanderbilt Pediatrics for treatment of an eye injury that occurred after the shooting.

Aaron said there were two school resource officers in the building when the shooting occurred. They were not in the immediate vicinity of the cafeteria where the shooting took place, and by the time they got there, the shooting had stopped and the shooter had used a gun to kill himself, Aaron said.

The school has about 2,000 students and is located in Antioch, a neighborhood about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of downtown Nashville.

School officials asked parents not to go to the high school to pick up their children, but to go to a nearby hospital instead. Students were driven there when they were released from school by the police.

At the hospital, which was being used as a reunification center, officials helped shocked parents reunite with their children.

Dajuan Bernard waited at a Mapco service station to be reunited with his son, a 10th grader who was held in the auditorium with other students Wednesday afternoon. He first heard about the shooting from his son, who “was kind of freaked out,” Bernard said. His son was upstairs where it happened but said he heard the gunshot.

“He was OK, and told me everything was OK,” Bernard said.

“His mom wants to homeschool anyway, so I don’t know. We can consider it, he said. “This world is so crazy, it can happen anywhere. We just have to protect the kids and raise the kids right to stop them from doing this themselves. That’s the hardest part.”

Wednesday’s school shooting comes almost two years after a shooter opened fire at a segregated private elementary school in Nashville and killed six people, including three children.

The tragedy prompted a months-long effort by hundreds of community organizers, families, protesters and many more who asked lawmakers to consider passing gun control measures in response to the shooting.

But in a Republican-dominated state, GOP lawmakers refused to do so. With the Republican supermajority intact after the November election, it is unlikely that attitudes have changed enough to consider any meaningful bills that would address gun control.

Instead, lawmakers have been more open to adding more security to schools — including passing a bill last year that would allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on public school groundsand prevents parents and other teachers from knowing who was armed.

Antioch has suffered other high-profile shootings in recent years. ONE 2017 fatal shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ killed one woman and injured seven people. And in 2018, a the shooter killed four people at a Waffle House.