A 17-year-old student of an Iowa high school opened fire on the campus just minutes before classes resumed after the winter breaker. One person was killed and five others, including the school principal, were injured in the shooting in the midwestern US state.
The shooter, identified as Dylan Butler, walked into the Perry High School at around 7.30 am with a handgun and a shotgun. Students barricaded in offices, ducked into classrooms, and fled in panic as he started firing.
After killing a student and injuring 5, he turned the gun on himself.
A senior at the school, Butler had posted a TikTok video from the school bathroom just before he went on a rampage. He captioned the post "Now we wait" while the song 'Stray Bullet' played in the background.
The song, by the German rock band KMFDM, features lyrics like "I'm your nightmare coming true, I am your worst enemy," and "Stray bullet, from the barrel of love".
Several other photos of Butler posing with firearms were found by investigators.
Cops suspect that he planned to kill many more as an improvised explosive device was found on his body.
Police are yet to provide a motive for the shooting. Two of his friends told The Associated Press that he was a quiet person who had been bullied for years.
"He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment. Was it a smart idea to shoot up the school? No. God, no," said 17-year-old Yesenia Roeder.
Her sister, Khamya Hall, also echoed the sentiment saying that Butler and his younger sister used to constantly get picked on and bullied. Butler's parents brought it up to the school, they said, and that was the "last straw" for him, the sisters said.
Gun violence is common in the United States, a country where there are more firearms than people, and where attempts to clamp down on their spread are always met with stiff political resistance.
The US has already recorded three mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nongovernmental organisation that defines a mass shooting as four or more people wounded or killed.
The Perry shooting comes less than two weeks before the Iowa caucus, the country's first contest kicking off the primary season for the 2024 presidential election.
