Two people were killed in a shooting at a New Mexico public library Monday
A gunman opened fire in a Clovis, N.M., public library on Monday, killing two library employees and injuring four others, the Eastern New Mexico News reports. The names of the victims have not been released.
Police say they’ve apprehended the gunman, but no motive for the shooting has been identified. Authorities have not named the suspect.
However, friends who saw photographs of the suspect being led from the scene in handcuffs told the Eastern New Mexico News that he was a sophomore at Clovis High School.
Lisa Baird, who was in the library at the time of the attack, told the newspaper that the young man shouted “Why aren’t you running? I’m shooting at you! Run!” during the assault.
“My initial thought was why would someone throw a cherry bomb or M-80 firecracker into the library?” Baird said. “Then I saw a young man aim his hand, which had a handgun in it, to the ground/carpet about six feet in front of him, and he fired like four or five shots into the carpet.”
Baird said she was struck by the shooter’s calm after police arrived. “When he was answering the cops’ questions, he was calm,” she said. “His voice held no negativity or shakiness ... no quavering at all.”
Matt Southard, who witnessed the attack, also commented on the shooter’s demeanor, KOB-TV reports.
“As they were walking him out he had a very smart look on his face and was flipping his hair back,” he said.
Southard said he was taken aback by the shooting in his hometown, a city of about 40,000 people located about 10 miles from the Texas border.
“I grew up born and raised in Clovis, and to see something like that in the town I grew up in, it was really shocking and devastating,” Southard said. “To see the man that supposedly had done all this was really just a blow to your heart, to know that something like that can happen so close to home.”
It’s not the only recent shooting at a public library. In June, a man was shot and wounded in a Columbus, Ohio, library in an altercation. In 2016, a shooting in the parking lot of a public library in Cleveland started with a perceived affront inside the library; one man was left blind by his injuries. And in 2015, police shot and killed Kevin Allen, 36, in a library in Lyndhurst, N.J., after he allegedly threatened them with a utility knife.
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez called the Clovis attack “horrific.”
“I am directing the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, and other state agencies, to assist and support the Clovis Police Department,” she said in a statement. “In the coming hours and days we will learn more information about this despicable act, but for now I ask all New Mexicans to pray for the victims and their families, and for the entire Clovis community.”
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