TOWNVILLE, S.C. -- A teenager killed his father at their home Wednesday before going to a nearby elementary school and opening fire with a handgun, wounding two students and a teacher, authorities said.
The teen was apprehended within minutes of the school shooting in a rural town about 110 miles northeast of Atlanta. One of the students was shot in the leg and the other in the foot, Capt. Garland Major with the Anderson County sheriff's office said. Both students were boys. The female teacher was hit in the shoulder.
"We are heartbroken about this senseless act of violence," said Joanne Avery, superintendent of Anderson County School District 4. She canceled classes at the school for the rest of the week.
Before the shooting at Townville Elementary about 1:45 p.m., the teen gunned down his 47-year-old father, Jeffrey Osborne, at their home about 2 miles from the school, authorities said. Authorities have not released the suspect's name or age beyond saying that he's a teen.
Crying and upset, the teen called his grandmother's cellphone at 1:44 p.m., Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore said. The grandparents couldn't understand what was going on, so they went to his home just 100 yards away. When they got there, they found Osborne had been shot and their grandson was gone.
About one minute later, authorities receive a 911 call from Townville Elementary School.
Sheriff John Skipper said the shooter drove a vehicle into the school parking lot and immediately started firing a handgun as he got out and moved toward the school. He declined to say how many shots were fired.
The shooter never entered the school building, and was apprehended by firefighter Jamie Brock, a 30-year veteran of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department.
Skipper didn't have specifics on how Brock stopped the teen: "I think he just took him down."
He said the fire station is close to the school and Brock arrived before officers responding to the dispatch.
Authorities did not release a motive for the shooting. They said they weren't sure whether the students and teacher were targeted.
The sheriff said the teen had been home-schooled. Skipper said the teen's mother was at work at the time of the shooting.
The school has about 300 students in its pre-kindergarten to sixth-grade classrooms. The students at Townville Elementary were bused to a nearby church after the shooting and reunited with their parents.
One of the injured students and the teacher were released from the hospital Wednesday evening, AnMed Health spokesman Juana Slade said. Greenville Health System spokesman Sandy Dees said the other student remained in critical condition Wednesday evening.
The school is in a rural part of the state and surrounded by farms.
"This is the country," Brandi Pierce, the mother of a sixth-grader, said as she began to cry. "You don't have this in the country. It just don't exist out here."
Gov. Nikki Haley released a statement shortly after the shooting.
"As we work together with law enforcement to make sure they have the support they need to investigate what happened in Townville, [my husband] Michael and I ask that everyone across South Carolina join us in praying for the entire Townville Elementary School family and those touched by today's tragedy."
The unincorporated community is along Interstate 85 near the Georgia-South Carolina state line.
A Section on 09/29/2016