 Students flee as police respond to a 911 call at Luther College High School on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Police have a person in custody after someone entered the Christian high school Tuesday morning with a gun. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press,Troy Fleece) |
The Associated Press
REGINA, Saskatchewan — An expelled 16-year-old student entered a Christian high school during chapel and put a pellet gun to the pastor’s head before he was tackled and arrested, witnesses said Tuesday.
Regina Police Service spokeswoman Lara Guzik Rostad said police received an emergency call Tuesday morning and arrested the teen shortly after. Police said they recovered a pellet pistol.
Alex McNair, a student at Luther College’s high school, said the gunman put the gun to the pastor’s head and told him to read a letter the teen wrote about his expulsion. He said the letter was about how the gunman had been bullied.
“He seemed completely unstable,” McNair said in a message to The Associated Press via the Internet social networking site Facebook.
Almost all the school’s 400 staff and students were in the chapel, and teachers opened the doors and students tried to leave quietly, McNair said.
Another student, Derek DeBolt, told Canadian Broadcasting Corp. television that the suspect put what looked like a fake gun in the pastor’s face.
He said a faculty member and police later tackled the suspect.
“I was just stunned. All the people were just stunned,” DeBolt said
Police said there were no reports of any injuries to staff, students or the suspect.
The arrest came on the same day as a deadly school shooting in Finland. In that case, a masked gunman killed 10 people at a trade school and burned some of their bodies before shooting himself in the head.