WICHITA, Kansas — An elementary school in south Wichita was locked down Monday morning after a man allegedly shot his wife while they were dropping off kids.
The shooting happened just outside Cessna Elementary School near 45th Street South and Meridian. No students or school employees were hurt.
Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter said a man and his wife used a Lyft to take their children to school. After the couple’s kids went into the school, witnesses reported that the husband shot his wife in the chest outside the vehicle, he said.
The woman ran toward the school for help, and the man chased her, Easter said. A deputy who was in the area arrived at the school shortly after the first report of gunshots and saw the man holding a gun to his wife’s head.
The deputy shot and wounded the suspect, Easter said. Both the man and his wife were taken to an area hospital and are in critical condition.
Easter said some children and a school employee were outside the school at the time of the shooting.
“This is a (domestic violence)-related shooting that happened outside the school,” Easter said. “Unfortunately, sometimes these things manifest around neighborhoods where there’s schools.
“I know for parents it can be scary. But … law enforcement showed up within two minutes of the shooting coming out, and it never got into the school itself where the kids were in danger.”
Wichita Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said he was glad law enforcement officers were on the scene so quickly and that students and staff members were unhurt.
“We do a good job of keeping everyone as safe as we can because we know we live in a volatile world where things happen,” Bielefeld said.
Parents were allowed to pick up their children about an hour after the shooting. More than a dozen police vehicles were still surrounding the school hours after the incident, and crime scene tape blocked off areas near the school’s main entrance.
Rebecca Wilson said she heard about the shooting from her father around 10 a.m. Monday and rushed to the school to pick up her son, Ben, a second-grader.
“The school called and said all the kids were all safe, that there had been a shooting,” Wilson said. “I was just waiting for some news or something. It’s just a scary thing to go through.”
Her son said he heard a schoolwide announcement of the lockdown, so his teacher locked the classroom door. The second-graders then gathered in a corner of the classroom for their usual Monday morning routine, where each student shares one thing about their weekend.
“We had to stand up quick, and I was scared enough that I was crying, and I was hugging my teacher,” Ben said. “This was just my first time for anything like that.”
Jeffery Allen retrieved his first-grade daughter from Cessna around 10:15 a.m. Monday, about an hour after the shooting. He said he’s glad students were safe, but escalating violence in the neighborhood worries him enough that he’s planning to move.
“We’ve had gun violence in front of our house, just down the road here, in just the last couple months,” Allen said. “It’s been horrible, and this is the last straw. We’re done with it.”
School district spokeswoman Susan Arensman said additional counselors were dispatched to Cessna Elementary on Monday and would be there Tuesday as well.
Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on Twitter @SuzPerezICT.
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