School Shooting Devastates El Cajon, California
LINDA STOUFFER, CNN ANCHOR: Counselors will be at a high school in southern California today. They'll be trying to help students and parents come to terms with the nation's latest school shooting; it happened yesterday. An 18-year-old student is accused of opening fire on the campus of Granite Hills High School, and that's just miles from the scene of a deadly school shooting three weeks ago. More on this now from CNN national correspondent Frank Buckley.</s>FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Police converged on El Cajon's Granite Hills High School after the loud report of a shotgun startled students in their classrooms.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody just got down on the ground. The teacher told everybody to get below the windows, I guess.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we had an announcement on the intercom telling us to remain in lock-down, that -- and they did not tell us exactly what had happened, but we just assumed it was a shooting.</s>BUCKLEY: Three students were hit by gunfire -- all expected to survive. The student suspect, 18-year old Jason Hoffman, was also wounded after a gun battle with an on-campus police officer.</s>CHIEF JAMES DAVIS, EL CAJON POLICE: Agent Rich Agundez, who is really the hero out of this incident.</s>BUCKLEY: The officer arresting the student, who was armed, police say, with a shotgun and a handgun. Two teachers were also hit, treated and released.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't find Monique...</s>BUCKLEY: Parents quickly arrived, desperate to find their children, searching through a student body of 2,800 students.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I said, oh my God, and I dialed the school and it was busy; and I was in the car, and we were over here. I cannot tell you the panic -- I just -- this is a high price to pay for education.</s>BUCKLEY: The shooting occurred in the same school district and barely six miles from Santana High School, where a campus shooting on March 5 left two students dead.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So close to Santana; it's just hard to believe that it actually happened.</s>BUCKLEY: But it did.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anybody who actually witnessed any part of the shooting, please walk forward to the yellow tape and contact the sheriff's deputies that are in the yellow windbreakers.</s>BUCKLEY: Another U.S. community left to wonder what, if anything, it could have done to prevent such violence.</s>GOV. GRAY DAVIS (D), CALIFORNIA: In general, we just have to be alert to the possibility of a child feeling alienated, distraught and left out for that child's sake and for all our children's sake.</s>BUCKLEY (on camera): The student suspect is expected to survive his wounds, but so far investigators say he hasn't been able to provide them with any information that might help them to determine a motive behind the latest shooting on a school campus. Frank Buckley, CNN, El Cajon, California.