Colorado School Closes For The Year After Shooting

Students at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo., are not in class today. In an email to families, the principal announced that classes will be canceled through the New Year after the shooting on Friday.

Officials say 18-year-old student gunman Karl Pierson opened fire inside the school, shooting fellow senior Claire Davis in the head. Davis remains in critical condition. Pierson then turned the gun on himself.

Colorado Public Radio's Megan Verlee, talks with Here & Now's Robin Young about the shooting, and how it demonstrates what authorities learned from the Columbine High School massacre, several years and several miles away.

"Columbine really shaped everything in the official response to this attack," Verlee says. "Starting with the fact that, as soon as people in the school knew what was going on, you had a deputy and a security officer who ran towards the shooter. As soon as they called it in to 9-1-1, law enforcement was coming to the scene and they were coming fast and ready to go in and engage. During Columbine, authorities actually drew a perimeter around the school, and that gave the shooters more time to cause more fatalities. Now they go in very fast.”