Wisconsin: Shooting At Prom Leaves Two Injured, Shooter Dead
A northern Wisconsin prom was interrupted by a shooting, which resulted in two students being injured and taken to the hospital late Saturday night.
A person with a rifle approached Antigo High School, a school about 150 miles north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the small town of Antigo, and started firing outside the building, according to the New York Times. Two students were hit in the shooting as they left the building where the prom was being held, according to Eric Roller, the chief of police in Antigo.
The shooting began around 11 p.m., around the time that the prom would have started to wind down and end. Some students had already left the festivities.
One witness described the alleged shooter as wearing camouflage pants and a dark top.
Nearby, police officers were already patrolling the parking lot and heard noises from the shooting. They responded in time to “fire upon the shooter, stopping the threat,” said Roller.
The officers regularly train for active shooter situations, and they were able to apply their knowledge quickly to the situation happening right before them.
“We regularly train for these situations through the [high] school and we use the different buildings of the school district,” Roller explained.
The police initially said three people being injured in the shooting, and CNN verified that the shooter was included in the count.
The students injured in the shooting and the alleged shooter were taken to Aspirus Langlade Hospital, but the shooter died from injuries, according to WSAW.
The shooter was identified as 18-year-old Jakob E. Wagner, according to the Associated Press. One student, a female, was said to be released from the hospital perhaps early Sunday morning, and a male student was undergoing surgery.
The suspected shooter’s body was taken to Fond du Lac County medical examiner’s office.
It is still unclear whether the person who started the shooting was a high school student. It is also unclear whether the two students who were shot were targets of the perpetrator.
Investigators did believe the town of Antigo, Wisconsin, was still under threat after the shooter was taken into custody.
After the shooting incident, students at the prom were taken to safety and the injured students’ families were notified. By 3 a.m., all students who remained from attending the prom were home safely. It is estimated that roughly 120 students may have attended the event in the small town in Wisconsin, where only about 8,000 people live.
“We were able to escort them out of here safely and they’ve all been returned to their families,” Roller said.
Traffic around the high school in the small Wisconsin town was limited for hours following the shooting. Only parents of students were allowed to get to the high school to make contact with their children.
One mother explained, “I have two other children that’s in the high school, and they don’t want to go back, period. They’re just beyond freaking out here.”
As required by law because the shooting involved a police officer, the Department of Justice in Wisconsin will lead the investigation. The Division of Criminal Investigation of Wisconsin will have to determine whether the use of force was justified.
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