A 17-year-old boy suspected of shooting a 16-year-old twice during a confrontation outside their Santa Rosa continuation school Tuesday morning was in custody as authorities lifted a 2.5-hour lockdown, allowing classes to resume for thousands of high school and junior college students on three adjoining campuses.
It’s the first school shooting in Sonoma County history.
Both the suspected shooter and victim are students at Ridgway, police and school officials said. After firing twice at his classmate just before 9 a.m., the shooter put the handgun into a backpack and handed it off to someone before heading to class ahead of the lockdown, police said.
Hours later, after he’d been identified by witnesses to the shooting as well as surveillance video, he was found in a locked classroom and arrested, Santa Rosa police Capt. John Cregan said.
Police were still searching for an accomplice reported to have taken the backpack holding the gun and driven away. “He gave it to somebody else who took it away from the campus,” Cregan said.
Police do not know who that person is or their whereabouts and it remained unclear if the person who took the backpack knew what it held, he said.
What prompted heated words before the violence wasn’t clear Tuesday afternoon, including whether it involved gang issues, Cregan said. But police said the shooting appeared to be targeted and that no further threat to public safety existed.
A second Ridgway student initially detained by police was questioned and released, Cregan said.
The news sent a jolt through the Santa Rosa school community, alarming thousands of parents, some of whom rushed to the two side‑by‑side high schools while others gathered at staging area set up for parents by police near the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.
“It just seems to be getting worse and worse,” said Sebastopol resident Alana Walker, whose 16-year-old daughter attends Santa Rosa High’s ArtQuest program. The girl texted her mother that she lay on the floor of the dance studio for the duration of the lockdown.
“I just never thought it was going to get so close to home,” Walker said.
The lockdown of Ridgway and the adjacent Santa Rosa High School and Santa Rosa Junior College was lifted about 11:35 a.m. Students were set to remain on campus and continue with their normal schedule, police said.
About 10:30 a.m. police officers walked one suspect from the Ridgway Avenue campus to a parked patrol SUV. The male, wearing all black clothing, smiled as he walked, according to witnesses.
The suspected shooter, arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, was loaded into the vehicle.
Officers then brought out a second male, wearing a red sweatshirt. He hung his head as he walked. The teen was taken into custody because surveillance video showed him in close proximity to the shooter after the attack, Cregan said. But after being questioned he didn’t appear to be involved and was released.
There were about a dozen people out front of the school as the two were taken into custody, including a few parents and students.
One man shouted out as the suspected gunman was escorted past.
“Little pr**k. Why are you smiling, pr**k?” the man said.
The shooting happened at the intersection of Ridgway Avenue and Morgan Street, just west of the continuation high school. School already was underway but some students were arriving for their first class. Several teens either saw or heard the shooting and called 911, reporting an altercation between two students and gunshots, Cregan said.
Ridgway high students Andres Farias and Rafael Rosales, both 17, had just parked and were walking to campus when they heard the first shot.
Farias said he looked up and saw a male in all black holding a gun turn and run toward campus.
“I see smoke and I’m like, ‘Is this real?’” Farias said.
First officers to arrive found witnesses but no suspect or victim. The victim, wounded in the stomach and torso, had driven himself to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Cregan said the victim was in stable condition and that his parents had been contacted.
The victim told officers he’d been shot while at the school and an initial alert by police was that the shooting had happened on campus. But that was later changed as it became clear the gunfire was at the nearby intersection.
A swarm of law enforcement officers from several agencies responded to help, including armed Cal Fire officials, Santa Rosa Junior College officers, sheriff’s deputies and CHP.
Officers blocked traffic and locked down Ridgway, Santa Rosa High and SRJC amid an armed search by officers for the shooter. The closed area between Ridgway and Elliot avenues and Mendocino and Range avenues hosts Santa Rosa’s largest collection of school campuses, spanning more than 170 acres and serving thousands of high school and junior college students.
As the city’s SWAT team started a class‑by‑class search, two law enforcement helicopters and a drone searched from above, relaying information to Santa Rosa police officials at a command center off nearby Mendocino Avenue. Surveillance video from campus also assisted officers, filling out details about the suspected shooter.
During the lockdown, police officials asked parents not to come to the schools but to go to The Jockey Club at 1350 Bennett Valley Road, just east of Brookwood Avenue near the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. Police officials were stationed there to help with information.
Nevertheless, some parents rushed to the school campuses, many after receiving text messages from their children in locked classrooms.
Mari Ferguson’s daughter, a senior at Ridgway High, texted her mother at 9:05 a.m. telling her she had heard gunfire and that the campus was on lockdown.
Ferguson, 47, of Santa Rosa said she immediately came to campus. She was standing with a growing group of parents on the sidewalk across from campus at Glenn Street and Ridgway Avenue.
“I panicked so I’m here, I just came,” Ferguson said.
Parent Ili Lawson said her daughter, in math class at Santa Rosa High, texted her very upset because their classroom door wouldn’t lock. Lawson went to the school and walked to the administration building seeking help for her daughter’s classroom, but found all of those doors locked.
“I’m so upset, worried and concerned. Why is the administration building, all their doors locked and safe but some of the children’s classrooms, they’re not able to lock their doors?” said Lawson.
Monday was the second time in five months that a report of a gunman had sent Darrell O’Neal rushing to the Santa Rosa High campus where his daughter goes to school. In the prior case, back in May on the day before the school’s graduation, a student had brandished a replica gun and no one was hurt. The investigation and lockdown disrupted daytime graduation ceremonies at Ridgway High.
“I’m worried about it,” O’Neal, 44, of Santa Rosa said as he stood on the sidewalk with other parents, waiting for news. “She’s only been in (high) school for a year and a couple of months now and we’ve already had a couple of these lockdowns.”
At 9:12 a.m. Santa Rosa police issued a public alert that the three schools were locked down for a shooting at Ridgway High. Police later said the gunfire happened off campus at the nearby intersection.
Santa Rosa City Schools sent automated phone calls to parents just after 10 a.m. describing the incident as an “isolated shooting at one student” and it was “not being considered an active shooter situation.”
Police officials set up a command center near the school to orchestrate the response.
“I’m shocked. It’s crazy,” said worried Petey Rodriguez, whose daughter, 17, is a senior at the school.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/10207245-181/shooting-at-ridgway-high-school?sba=AAS
“It just seems to be getting worse and worse,”
Not ‘seems’… IS.
“Police do not know who that person is or their whereabouts and it remained unclear if the person who took the backpack knew what it held, he said.”
They’ll beat it out of that kid.
“Farias said he looked up and saw a male in all black holding a gun turn and run toward campus.”
Toward campus?
That’s why the dummy got caught (if any of this is even true… who knows anymore).