A Kansas father shot his wife on Monday morning during a “domestic dispute” at their children’s elementary school drop-off, sending the campus into lockdown.
The man reportedly opened fire, striking his wife in the chest shortly after the couple dropped off their children at Cessna Elementary School in Wichita.
Classes at the school begin at 9 a.m. and law enforcement responded to a 9:15 a.m. call reporting a shooting outside.
Witnesses reported seeing the man pull a gun on his wife and shoot her in the chest near their Lyft ride, which they had ordered to drive their family to the elementary school.
“She then ran toward the school for help. He chased her,” Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter told KAKE News.
“At the point that our deputy arrived, he had the gun pointing at her head.”
Easter said that the deputy took cover, waiting a few moments until the man stepped far enough away from her for a moment before firing two rounds at him.
The man was taken into custody and hospitalized in extreme critical condition. The woman was also in critical condition.
School staff rushed all children inside the classrooms as the building was placed under lockdown. Police notified the community that there was no threat of an active shooter inside the elementary school.
“This is a [domestic violence]-related shooting that happened outside the school. There was no school shooting whatsoever,” Easter told the Wichita Eagle.
“Unfortunately, sometimes these things manifest around neighborhoods where there are schools […] I know for parents it can be scary. But the fact of the matter is law enforcement showed up within two minutes of the shooting coming out, and it never got into the school itself where the kids were in danger.”
All preschool classes were canceled for the day and parents were given the option to pick up their children.
