Breaking news
Houston ChronicleWelch Middle School temporarily was placed on lockdown Wednesday morning after an HISD student was hospitalized after a dispute led to a shooting in the parking lot of a nearby business, according to Houston Police Department officials.
Houston Independent School District officials called city police after the student ran into the middle school and said they'd just been shot at earlier that morning, according to the Houston Police Department. The 14-year-old who was injured was a passenger in a car and not involved in the dispute that led to the shooting, nor was the student attending Welch.
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Officers around 7:50 a.m. responded to a report of a shooting near the intersection of West Bellfort Avenue and South Gessner Road in southwest Houston, officials said. The caller told investigators a boy in his teens had been injured. Emergency responders took him to the hospital but his condition was not immediately made available.
Witnesses told investigators that two teenagers had been in a dispute, and that one had found the other that morning near the intersection, Assistant Police Chief Yasar Bashir said. Detectives weren't sure if the two teenagers argued or fought beforehand, but at some point, one pulled a gun and began firing at the other.
The targeted teenager started running from the gunfire, Bashir said. While he was across the street from the other teen, a bullet struck a vehicle heading north on South Gessner and injured the teenage passenger. The boy was taken to a hospital, where he was expected to survive.
The fleeing teenager then ran into the school, where he is a student, and informed officials about the shooting, Bashir said.
Detectives arrived within a minute of the first report of the shooting and interviewed the Welch student and found a vehicle the suspect arrived in, Bashir said. Officers as of Wednesday afternoon were searching for a teenager in connection with the shooting. It wasn't immediately clear whether that person was a Houston ISD student or not.
