Parents were required to sign a release paper to pick up their children

Jaime Gonzalez, 15, was pronounced dead at a local hospital at 9:15 a.m., about an hour and 15 minutes after police responded to a 911 call reporting an moncler jackets individual with a gun at Cummings Middle School in downtown Brownsville.

“The suspect was ordered numerous times to drop this pistol and he disobeyed officers' commands,” interim Police Chief Orlando Rodriguez said at a news conference. “He pointed the weapon at the officers, at which point the officers that were actively engaged by the suspect fired at least twice.”

No other students or faculty were injured, he said.

The gun Gonzalez was carrying, a CO2.177-caliber pellet pistol, looked like a dangerous firearm, said Detective Jose Treviño, a police spokesman.

“It has the exact appearance of Glock,” Treviño said, adding that the Texas Rangers will join the investigation.

The school, which has an enrollment of more than 700 students, was to remain closed today as the investigation continues.

“He wouldn't hurt somebody,” Gonzalez's godmother, Norma Leticia Navarro, told the Brownsville Herald. “It was not right. ... They didn't give him a chance.”

Navarro said the teen was helpful and caring, always carrying things for her because she's disabled.

“He was always wanting to help,” she said.

The event began with Gonzalez assaulting another student moncler jackets 2011 randomly, Rodriguez said, after which school officials discovered the pistol and called for police assistance.

Officers confronted the teen as other students remained in classrooms on lockdown.

“The officers gave numerous commands,” Rodriguez said.

Gonzalez's mother was quickly notified and was at the hospital as the boy was brought in, Brownsville Independent School District Superintendent Carl Montoya said.

Brownsville school officials worked throughout the day to notify parents, telling them to retrieve their children at a high school to which they'd been bused.

Many found out before, via text messages from students, media reports and word of mouth.

City and school district police guarded the entrance of the high school as the line of vehicles stretched down the street.

Students emerging from Porter High School with parents recounted teachers locking the doors of their homerooms as the principal announced a lockdown over the intercom.

Some students crouched under desks; others were told to gather in the corner of their classroom; still others were shaking and praying.

“The teacher told us, ‘This is the real thing,'” said Renee Almazan, 12, a seventh-grader who said she heard two or three gunshots from her classroom.

Seventh-grader Abigail Lozano said she was in her homeroom when the school was locked down. Teachers and administrators didn't tell students much as they were hustled to buses.

“I was kind of nervous,” she said. “They didn't tell us what was happening.”

Jackie Salinas, 14, a freshman, said students at both Cummings and Porter were sent home for the day. School at Cummings is canceled today, but students who want to attend class can report to Breeden Elementary School.

Daniel Lozano, the father of a 14-year-old eighth-grader, said he and his wife closed up their small grocery and rushed to the school to find information. He expressed alarm that someone had been able to get a gun into the middle school.Moncler bags outlet, buy cheap moncler 2011 new bags.

“This is really messed up,” said Lozano, no relation to Abigail Lozano. “I thought they had more security.”

Dina Coronado, a teacher at another BISD school whose son attends Cummings, said the district handled things well. Parents were required to sign a release paper to pick up their children, and the scene inside the high school was orderly. Still, Coronado said, she was terrified when she heard about the shooting.

“What mother wouldn't be?” she said. “I really lost it. You think the worst as a parent.”

Montoya, the superintendent, said the district's response went as smoothly as possible.

“We can't just release 700 students; we had to have a systematic procedure to check each student to make sure the correct guardian picked up each student. Otherwise it would have been chaos.”

Still, he said, the event merited a complete review cheap moncler of district security. He said metal detectors were a possibility, though they would be useless to detect an air gun made of plastic.