A School Shooting Just Happened in Moscow

It's doesn't just happen in American, it seems. On Monday, a student opened fire in a high school in northern Moscow, fatally shooting a police officer and a teacher while holding dozens of other students hostage. He has now been captured by the police, but his motive remains a mystery.

The shooting happened in neighborhood of Otradnoye, at School No. 263, at around noon local time. The gunman, a fellow student, walked into the school building with a gun — forcing his way past a security guard, who alerted officials — shot a teacher on his way, then took another teacher and two dozen students hostage without making any demands.

"On his way to the class the shooter injured one of the teachers who died later," said Russia's federal intelligence agency. "The police officers arrived to the school. When they entered the building the shooter opened a gun fire, injured one and killed another."

Hundreds of other students were evacuated, but none were injured.

"The person who took 20 people and a teacher hostage is a student in the upper classes at the same school," an interior ministry spokesman said. "He has been neutralised and all the students have been freed. One policeman was fatally wounded during the operation and died in hospital, and a teacher at School No. 263 was also killed."

The incident comes on the heels of bloody January in the U.S. Less than a week ago, shots were fired at Roosevelt High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, the week before that saw gun violence at Purdue University, the University of Oklahoma, and South Carolina State University. In fact, this year has seen an average of one school shooting every other day — in spite of 90 percent of U.S. districts tightening security, with a vast number of schools using metal detectors, surveillance cameras and dress codes, the rate of school shootings hasn't statistically changed since the mid- to late-1990s.