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A body was found Wednesday night in the Colorado woods near the abandoned car that belonged to a 17-year-old student accused of shooting two administrators at his Denver high school earlier in the day, a sheriff said.
Park County Sheriff Tom McGraw said the body was discovered not far from the car in a remote mountain area about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Denver, near the small town of Bailey, in Park County. The town had been ordered to shelter in place while officers from a number of agencies including the FBI combed the forest.
But, authorities said they have not yet identified who it was and McGraw declined to say if it was a man or reveal the cause of death.
Earlier in the day, Denver police identified the suspect as Austin Lyle.
The shooting occurred at East High School in Denver while two administrators searched Lyle for weapons, a daily requirement because of the boy’s behavioral issues, authorities said. Lyle fled after the shooting.
It occurred at a school shaken by frequent lockdowns and violence, including the recent killing outside the school of a classmate that prompted East High School students to march on the Colorado Capitol earlier this month. Parents who converged on the 2,500-student campus on Wednesday voiced frustration that officials had not done enough to protect their children.
“I am sick of it,” said Jesse Haase, who planned to talk with her daughter about taking her out of classes for the rest of the school year.
Amid the flurry of criticism over lax security, Denver school officials said after the shooting that they would once again put armed officers into the city’s public high schools.
There were no school resource officers on campus at the time of Wednesday’s shooting, said Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas.
The shooting happened just before 10 a.m. in an office area as Lyle was undergoing a search as part of a “safety plan” that required him to be patted down daily, officials said.
The gun used in the shooting was not immediately recovered, Thomas said.
