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Credit: Ali Tadayon / EdSource
Oakland Police responded to a shooting at a campus that houses Bay Area Technology School, Rudsdale Continuation and Newcomer high schools and Sojourner Truth Independent Study school.
Credit: Ali Tadayon / EdSource
Oakland Police responded to a shooting at a campus that houses Bay Area Technology School, Rudsdale Continuation and Newcomer high schools and Sojourner Truth Independent Study school.
Three schools were evacuated, and six adults transported to area hospitals after a shooting on an East Oakland school campus Wednesday afternoon.
Oakland Police responded to a shooting at a campus that houses Bay Area Technology School, Rudsdale Continuation and Newcomer high schools and Sojourner Truth Independent Study school on the 8200 block of Fontaine Street.
Police aren’t certain how many shooters were involved in the incident. All are still at large.
Two of the shooting victims have life-threatening injuries and one was released from the hospital Wednesday. All the injured were affiliated with the Rudsdale schools, Assistant Chief Darren Allison told reporters during a press conference. Department officials would not say if any of the victims were students.
“Educators are again shaken, sad, horrified and stressed after today’s school shooting on the campus shared by Bay Tech Charter and two OUSD schools, Rudsdale and Sojourner Truth,” said a statement from the Oakland Education Association, the district’s teachers union. “We send our strength and support to the victims’ families and friends, and we recommit to doing whatever it takes to stop future school shootings.”
Mayor Libby Schaaf verified that no juveniles were injured in the shooting in a Tweet: “Today’s gun violence at Sojourner Truth school shocks the soul – our schools are sanctuaries for our children. Our investigators report all six victims are adults and are being treated for injuries at hospitals now. The school is now clear, and all children are being reunited with families.”
City Councilwoman Treva Reid said that a majority of the victims were students, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The website for Rudsdale Newcomer high school describe its students as recently arrived immigrants, between the ages of 16 and 21, who have fled their home countries because of violence and instability.
During a police briefing, Captain Casey Johnson urged anyone with a video recording of the event to come forward.
Parents were advised to pick their children up from another nearby school, Oakland Academy of Knowledge.
Tanesha Craig’s 10-year-old son Jayceon goes to school at Howard Elementary across the street from where the shooting occurred Wednesday. Craig said she got a call from her son’s teacher in the afternoon alerting her to what happened, and even though she knew Jayceon was OK, she began to panic.
While she’s used to hearing about school shootings elsewhere in the country, this hit way too close to home, she said.
“I never thought it would happen this nearby,” Craig said. “It was a close call, and he was thinking about going to that school next year.”
Jayceon said he was scared when the shooting happened, but relieved when his parents picked him up. He said the shooting has him feeling uneasy about walking to school in the future.
This is the second time in a month that there has been a shooting on an East Oakland school campus. A 13-year-old was shot at Madison Park Academy in the city’s Sobrante Park neighborhood in August. A 12-year-old was arrested.
Madison Park Academy, part of the Oakland Unified School District, serves 750 students in grade 6-12 with a focus on engineering and design.
Oakland Unified spokesman John Sasaki told reporters at the scene that unarmed school security guards, called Culture and Climate Ambassadors, were on the campus at the time of the shooting. The district informed parents of the shooting by email and robocall, he said.
Sasaki sought to reassure the community that despite two shootings in the last month, schools are safe. He said the two shootings are the only such incidents in the six years he has been in the district.
The community needs to come together to stop the violence in the community that is spilling over into the schools, he said.
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