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School student shot dead
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A 16-YEAR-OLD school student waiting for school to open was shot to death by a former student on Friday in the latest act of violence in and around US schools, authorities said.
Police said the victim, Neal Boyd IV, an average-to above-average student at Lew Wallace High School, with no disciplinary problems, was targeted by 17-year-old suspect Donald Burt Jr who pulled out a gun and shot him in the head as other students stood by in a parking lot.
Burt, who was expelled from the school last year for failing to attend class, was unarmed when apprehended a few blocks away at a relative's home and was being questioned by police.
Burt, whose alleged motive was still unclear, was charged with murder, a city spokeswoman said.
"It appears that he (victim) was targeted because ... the suspect shot the student and walked away," Gary Schools Superintendent Mary Guinn said. "If there had been a desire to shoot someone else, he would have."
Police said there had been two or three shootings in and around Lew Wallace High School in recent years, including the fatal shooting of a pregnant student at a football game four years ago.
"I wish all this shooting would stop," the victim's father, Neal Boyd III, told reporters.
Gary, a city of more than 100,000 near Chicago, has a reputation for high crime and high poverty rates. It had the top per-capita murder rate in the United States in the early 1990s, although the number of murders has fallen by half in recent years.
But the Glen Park neighbourhood surrounding the school had seen its share of crime, local activist Dena Holland-Neal said.
School shootings have increased in the United States in recent years, although most of the shootings have been in suburban school districts and not at urban schools.
Since a deadly attack at a school in Santee, California, on March 5, there have been a number of threats to schools.
In Santee, a 15-year-old student allegedly killed two classmates, the worst incident of US school violence since two teen-agers killed 15 people, including themselves, at Columbine High School in Colorado in April 1999. Last week, an 18-year-old allegedly opened fire at his school in El Cajon, California, injuring at least 10 people.
(SD-Agencies)
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