The teenage boy who shot up a Texas high school on Tuesday was let in by another student, according to an arrest affidavit.
Tracy Haynes Jr., 17, has been charged with aggravated assault mass shooting after he injured five students amid the rampage at Wilmer Hutchins High School in Dallas.
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News captured the moment Haynes entered the school hallway. He was let in by a student using an ‘unsecured door’ just after 1pm, according to his arrest affidavit.
Haynes then approached one student and appeared to shoot them at point-blank range. Five students, aged 15 to 18, were taken to local hospitals with injuries, according to the affidavit.
The suspect turned himself into authorities later on Tuesday and was booked into the Dallas County Jail, where he is being held on a $600,000 bond.
First responders were called to the school at 1:06pm according to Dallas Fire-Rescue personnel. By 1:45pm the active shooter threat had reportedly ended, but helicopter footage showed a heavy police presence around the school.
An 11th grade student told NBC DFW that a dispute over a dice game led to the gunfire.
‘They said that they were playing a dice game, I guess that’s what it was over, I guess he lost his money, the boy that was shooting,’ she said.
‘We were in class and I saw him walk by and then two seconds later I heard like six shots, and the teacher ran to the door and closed it and told us to hide in the corner.’
The student said the shots she heard were loud because she was sitting at the front of the classroom.
‘Everybody just started running and I was like “was that a gunshot?” and this girl next to me she started falling down,’ she said.
She added that the school’s metal detectors were working that day, raising questions about how the weapon got on school grounds.
Harrowing images have circulated of students fleeing for their lives on a local road and across the school’s field toward the Wilmer-Hutchins Eagle Stadium.
By 1:45pm local time, the active shooter threat had reportedly ended, but helicopter footage still showed a heavy police presence around the school.
Another student, a senior, claimed to be even closer to the shooting, telling NBC DFW that she was just seven feet away when the shots rang out.
‘I was really scared and I was panicking really bad. It was bad, I was really afraid,’ she said.
‘I was actually in the cafeteria getting my lunch and I thought maybe it was some balloons popping or something from my airpods and then I saw a whole lot of kids running the opposite way.’
LaTara Dobbin, the mother of a freshman boy, said her son jumped out of his classroom window when the shots rang out and ran to a nearby elementary school.
‘This is going on too much at this school. Last year my oldest son was a senior here, and there was a shooting. Now he’s here with same thing going on. It’s ridiculous,’ Dobbin said.
One student was injured in the shooting that took place in a classroom at the same school last year.
Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde gave a news conference just after 5pm and explained that all students had been reunited with their parents.
School will be canceled for the rest of the week, she said, adding that mental health counselors would be made available to students and staff.
‘You don’t ever just get used to this and I’m very aware of that,’ Elizalde said. ‘It certainly weighs very heavy on my heart. But I can’t begin to imagine, as a parent myself, I’m trying to put myself in those shoes.’