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UPDATE (Jan. 6, 2024, 11:58 a.m. ET): Iowa authorities have identified the sixth-grader who was killed as 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff. Authorities also said a total of seven people — four students and three school staff members — suffered injuries, including Principal Dan Marburger, who was shot and remains in critical condition.
A sixth-grader was killed and five other people were injured in a shooting at Perry High School in Iowa on Thursday morning, the first day of school after the holiday break, authorities said.
Four of the wounded are students and one is a school administrator, according to Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, who provided an update at an afternoon press conference. They are being treated at area hospitals.
Authorities said that reports of an active shooter at the school first came in at 7:37 a.m. local time, before classes began. When Perry police officers arrived at the scene, they saw students and faculty members either sheltering in place or running away, Mortvedt said. Officers found multiple people with gunshot wounds inside the school, including the suspected shooter, who was dead apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot.
Mortvedt identified the shooter as a 17-year-old Perry High student Dylan Butler. He was "armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small caliber handgun belt," Mortvedt said, and had made social media posts "in and around the time of the shooting."
Police also found an improvised explosive device while searching the school, and the state Fire Marshal and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms "rendered the device safe," according to Mortvedt.
Fewer students were in the building than usual when the shooting happened because classes had not yet started for the day, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said earlier at a morning press conference.
Mortvedt declined to speak about a possible motive but added that investigators are looking into the suspect's background.
Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has resisted calls for stricter gun safety measures — and in fact loosened gun laws following mass shootings — called the shooting a "senseless tragedy."
"It's impossible to understand why anything like this happens," Reynolds said in brief remarks at the afternoon press conference. "But again I want you to know that we'll work tirelessly to get the answers so that we can prevent it from happening again."
The shooting is the fourth incident of gun violence on school property nationwide this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. Last year, the U.S. hit a record number of mass killings involving guns, defined by the Gun Violence Archive as shootings in which four people or more are killed, not including the shooter.
The shooting also comes days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, which are slated to begin on Jan. 15. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential primary candidate who campaigned in Perry on Thursday, posted a brief statement on X about his prayers for the community.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, when asked at a campaign event about the shooting, told reporters that the federal government should not be leading the effort to "create safe environments." "I think it is more of a local and state issue,” he said Thursday, "but we’ve shown how it’s done in Florida." Last year, DeSantis signed into law a permitless concealed carry bill, and in the wake of the Maine mass shooting in October, he called for more people to be institutionalized against their will.