Oakland School Shooting Likely Gang-Related With at Least 2 Shooters, Police Say

Officials from the City of Oakland and the Oakland Unified School District gave an update on Thursday on the shooting at the King Estate campus on Wednesday.

Six adults were injured after a shooting at East Oakland’s school campus which houses multiple schools, according to police.

During the press conference, Chief LeRonne Armstrong says all of the six people shot have a connection to the campus and are over the age of 18.

He says two of the victims are in serious condition. One victim is in stable condition but the exact condition is unknown.

Three other victims have been released from the hospital.

Of the six victims, two of them are students, one victim is a counselor, one is a security guard and two are part of the school staff.

Chief Armstrong says there are at least two shooters and another accomplice related to this case, “but they may have been more” he said.

The chief says there were more than 30 rounds fired on the campus. “That is wholly unacceptable,” he said.

He confirms the shooting is likely gang related. But no arrests have been made.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff said “we have to do better” in Thursday’s news conference, calling for federal gun control action.

“We have to continue to demand to people who have the most power to change like what happened yesterday (on Wednesday), to take that action,” she said.

ABC7 I-Team reporter Dan Noyes tweeted on Thursday school administrators sent texts to victims of Wednesday’s shooting in Oakland, telling them not to cooperate with police. That’s according to law enforcement sources, confirmed by a former Oakland city council member, Noyes wrote.

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At this time, investigators have not released a description of the shooting suspect or suspects but continue their search for those individuals.

Oakland Unified released a statement Wednesday night saying there will be no school on campus Thursday.

ABC7 News spoke to a parent who was on the scene picking up his 4-year-old daughter at the elementary school. “You hear about this happening all the time… it’s the closest it’s ever got to home. It’s a surreal feeling and you panic, you just want to get to your daughter,” the parent said. He said that he is fortunate his young daughter is clueless as to what was happening.

Tonyia Carter from Youth ALIVE! spoke to ABC7 News reporter Lyanne Melendez while students waited for their parents at a nearby church.

“We are baffled, we are concerned,” said Carter. “Not only that, we are p****d off, because the people who need to be on the ground and in the streets and in the schools are not the ones being funded for this work. So we are p****d off, baffled and everything, because this type of stuff could be intervened. You have to have people in these schools and on these campuses that these kids are relatable to.”

On Thursday, OUSD Board President Gary Yee says board members have been in different meetings all morning to address this violence and they’re in the process of reviewing safety measures, not just at the Rudsdale High School campus (part of the King Estate campus) but at each one of their schools.

“Getting the people that are most responsible for the crime off the street is the most important part and that’s not happening, the judges are not keeping them in jail,” Brenda Grisham, Chair of the Oakland Violence Prevention Coalition said. “They need to sit down, because if you get them in jail the first time, they can’t commit the second crime.”

With a string of nine homicides across the city in the days leading up to this mass shooting, Grisham says this shouldn’t just be the city’s problem and she says, everybody can play a part.

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According to Rudsdale High’s website, many of the enrolled students are immigrants who have recently fled their home countries due of violence. “A majority of them are working to support themselves and their families while also pursuing a high school diploma,” the website says. “Due to their migration experiences, our students have faced a lot of trauma.”

The students are all between the ages 16 to 21 years old and are navigating systems in the U.S. for the first time as adolescents.

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