2 Florida Students Injured By Gunfire On Way Back From School

Two Middleton High School students were walking back home when they were shot and injured on Friday, Tampa police said.

The incident took place near the intersection of North 24th Street and East Curtis Avenue, Tampa, Florida, about 3:05 p.m. EST, Bradenton Herald reported.

Two senior Middleton students — one 17 and another 18 years of age — were walking home after their school got dismissed when the younger girl got hit in the leg by what appeared to be a ricochet, while the second girl was grazed in the foot by a bullet.

The 18-year-old received medical treatment on the scene while the 17-year-old was rushed to a nearby hospital. The victims’ names were not released by the Tampa police.

The police confirmed that the origin of the shooting was not the school campus. The source of the shooting is currently under investigation. The forensic team will be collecting evidence from the scene of crime and witnesses will be interviewed.

"At this point, we don't know if the gunfire came from a passing car, we don't know where it came from," said Steve Hegarty, a Tampa Police spokesperson, Fox 13 reported. "It's a very dangerous thing. It's something that happened off campus. We would like to think that we have enough safeguards in place that students are not going to do anything dangerous or stupid on campus. This happened off campus, but we need to find out if any students were involved if it was someone else who was involved."

Hegarty added that it remains to be seen whether it was a random gunshot or the victims in the case were specifically targeted.

The incident happened days after a former student opened fired inside the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Maryland, Florida, with his AR-15 rifle Wednesday, killing 17 people and injuring 14.

Assuming the worst, Mayor Bob Buckhorn rushed to the scene of the latest incident on Friday. “Immediately my thought was, not now, not in our city, not again,” he said.

Hegarty said the entire state of Florida was shaken to the core following the recent shooting.

“This is a week where everybody is on heightened alert,” he said. “You know, this obviously is much less serious than some of the things that we’ve seen.”

Middleton High School was placed on temporary lockdown following the incident. When parents of students heard about the latest incident, their minds immediately jumped to the horrifying mass killing in Maryland.

"I'm a nervous wreck. I'm scared. I mean, [my son] goes to school right across the street. Who could say it could happen to my kid? And I don't want that to happen," said Sean Rooker, whose son is a senior at Middleton. "I'm petrified to even come out of my house because of the fact of this going on."

Michael Reeves, who lives near the area where the incident took place, shared similar sentiments. “We don’t want that coming here, so if you can see the police officers, they were really out at the schools trying to make sure that everybody understands that safety is more important than anything right now,” he said.