Associated Press
NEW YORK — A teen-ager opened fire in the hallway at a high school near Lincoln Center on Tuesday, seriously wounding two fellow students in what authorities said may have been a dispute over a girl.
The shooting on Manhattan’s Upper West Side occurred at Martin Luther King Jr. High School on what would have been the 73rd birthday of the apostle of nonviolence. The public school has 3,000 students.
Schools chancellor Harold Levy said the suspect was an 18-year-old who had not been attending the school. No arrests had been made in the case by Tuesday evening, police spokesman Lt. Brian Burke said.
Authorities said Andrel Napper, 17, and Andre Wilkins, 18, were shot from behind in a fourth-floor hallway. One was shot in the back and the other in the buttocks, and both were listed in serious condition.
Wilkins’ father, Wadell Parks, said he was grateful his son wasn’t paralyzed.
"The only thing we’ve got to deal with now is this issue of how this other child, because he’s a child as well, got into the school with a gun," Parks said.
The school was swiftly locked down and students kept in their classrooms as police in riot gear swept the building. The school’s metal detectors and X-ray machines were working Tuesday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
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