Two students opened fire Tuesday, May 7, 2019 in a Denver suburb high school not far from Columbine High School, killing one teenager and wounding eight others before they were overpowered and taken into custody.
The suspects were caught after allegedly targeting two separate areas of the STEM School Highlands Ranch on Tuesday afternoon.
Authorities identified Devon Erickson, 18, as one of the suspects. Authorities also identified a second suspect as an underage female. Both were not known to authorities prior to the shooting.
The incident happened exactly a week after a gunman killed two students and wounded four at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said the shooters were able to get deep inside the school because they were students there. Officers arrived within minutes of the shooting and heard gunfire when they entered the school, but they never exchanged fire with the suspects.
One of the suspects had already been restrained by a security officer and was caught within a minute of deputies arriving at the scene, while the other was detained in a hallway four minutes later.
At least one student encountered a shooter and tried to save the other students in the school. The 18-year-old, Kendrick Castillo, was the lone fatality of the school shooting.
According to witnesses, Castillo lunged at one of the shooters before he was fatally shot, giving other people precious time to take cover and escape. Castillo, a 12th-grader at STEM, only had three days left in the school before his graduation.
The public charter school focuses on science, technology, engineering and math and has more than 1,850 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The school was closed by district officials for the remainder of the week following the day of the shooting.
