Two students shot at Los Angeles middle school, girl arrested

A preteen shooter wounded two students when she opened fire Thursday morning inside a Los Angeles Middle School classroom, leaving one in critical condition, cops said.

The Salvador Castro Middle School was on lockdown Thursday after the 12-year-old female shooter started shooting at the school before 9 a.m. local time, cops said.

Authorities didn’t release a possible motive for the shooting.  

Television footage showed the suspect wearing a sweatshirt with her hands behind her back.

Students are led away from the school after the shooting in Los Angeles. (KTLA)

A 15-year-old boy was struck in the head and remains in stable but critical condition, cops said.

A girl, also 15, was also shot was shot in the wrist, officials said.

The schools shares a campus with Belmont High School, according to local reports.

Cops arrested the suspect at the school, officials said, and recovered the weapon used.

Two students — an 11-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl — and a 30-year-old woman were injured but not shot during the incident, officials said.

“We will attend to the needs of these students, the witnesses, very carefully, with the understanding that this is very traumatic,” said LA School Police Chief Steve Zipperman at the scene.

Update: One person detained following shooting on campus of Belmont High School/Sal Castro Middle School. Watch live: https://t.co/2T4xjKUCQ1pic.twitter.com/LOfbr8zNHT

— KTLA (@KTLA) February 1, 2018

The shooting sparked panic in the Westlake District of Los Angeles, and came just a week after two high school students were killed by a classmate in western Kentucky.

Jocelyn Lopez told local news channel KTLA her 13-year-old sister was sitting near the two students and “just heard something pop inside the classroom.”

“It was really close to her,” Lopez told the channel. “Not even the school is safe … it’s just bad.”

Mother Elizabeth Acevedo and her son Andres, 3, wait for news of her son Jose, an eighth grader at the school.  (DAMIAN DOVARGANES/AP)

School officials said classes would carry on Thursday, but are offering counseling for anyone distressed by the shooting.

It wasn’t clear if the school had gone through one of the district’s required random checks, in which officials use wands to root out any weapons at schools.

An audit of the system released last April found 10% of schools didn’t conduct the searches on a daily basis.