Parents wait outside Hug High School after a shooting on campus caused a lockdown, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016, in Reno, Nev. (Andy Barron/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP)
RENO — A campus police officer shot a student Wednesday during a confrontation witnessed by dozens of other students at a Nevada high school, according to authorities.
Reno police Officer Tim Broadway told reporters that one student was taken to a hospital with unspecified injuries after the shooting at Hug High School. A lockdown was lifted by mid-afternoon and students were released to their parents.
More than 40 students witnessed the incident, Broadway said, including many who shot cellphone video that police want to see before the public.
“There’s multiple videos out there,” said department spokesman Broadway. “There’s some very disturbing video out there. But there are other events that led up to this incident, so please don’t react to those.”
Nevada Department of Public Safety Director James Wright told The Associated Press that a 16-year-old was taken to Renown Hospital Medical Center in Reno after he was shot.
Neither Wright nor Broadway knew the extent of the teen’s injuries, and a hospital spokeswoman said she could not provide information about his condition.
Broadway said reports that another student had been stabbed before the shooting weren’t true.
He wouldn’t say whether a knife or any other weapon was involved. He said that the “disturbance” was under investigation.
The Reno Gazette-Journal reported that it reviewed video showing a student wielding a knife before being wounded.
A student, Robert Barragan, told the Gazette-Journal that two male students were fighting outside the school library before a police officer shot the knife-wielding student in the shoulder.
The shooting was reported about 11:30 a.m. at the school on the city’s north side, a few blocks from U.S. Highway 395.
The district issued a statement before 1 p.m. calling the campus “currently stable and secure with heavy police presence.”
Hug High opened in 1968 and is named for Proctor Ralph Hug Jr., a former teacher, athletic coach and Washoe County School superintendent who served as a state senator and a federal judge.