2 dead, 17 hurt in US shooting

Benton, january 23

A 15-year-old boy opened fire with a handgun in his high school in Kentucky on Tuesday, killing two classmates and wounding over a dozen others before being arrested.

The shooting began shortly before 8 am CST at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, a town about 130 miles from Nashville, Tennessee, according to Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin.

Nineteen students were struck by gunfire, and two of them were fatally wounded. A boy and a girl, both 15, were pronounced dead at a hospital trauma centre, Bevin said.

The police said the violence erupted when the suspect walked into the school armed with a handgun and started shooting. The governor said the youth was apprehended at the scene “in a nonviolent way”. No further details of the circumstances of the shooting were immediately divulged by authorities. — Reuters