OAKLAND — At least six people were injured in a shooting near an East Oakland school campus on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.
Lt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office confirmed three adults were taken by ambulance to Highland Hospital and another three people were taken to Eden Medical Center. Two of victims at Highland Hospital are in critical condition, Kelly said. A hospital administrator later confirmed a third victim at Highland was also in critical condition.
In a statement, an Oakland Unified School District spokesman acknowledged the incident at the district’s King Estate campus in the 8200 block of Fontaine Street, home to Rudsdale continuation and newcomer high schools, Bay Area Technology charter school, and Sojourner Truth Independent Study, which has no students at the site. The spokesman said the incident happened near its Oakland Academy of Knowledge school but that neither it nor its students were involved, before adding that it knew nothing more than what police investigators had released.
Shortly before 1 p.m., officers responded to reports of possible shots fired near an Oakland Unified School District building in the 8200 block of Fontaine Street. The building is home to Rudsdale continuation and newcomer high schools and the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership independent-study school, as well as Bay Area Technology School, a 6th-to-12th-grade charter school.
A 10th-grade student at Bay Tech told the Bay Area News Group he was in class when he heard a call for the school to lockdown.
“At first I thought it was just a drill,” the student said. “But then I heard the teacher crying in fear and I was like, this is not a drill.”
Multiple police officers carrying weapons later entered the student’s classroom and called out, “everybody hands up,” he said. “We all walked out and we saw dozens of cop cars,” he said.
Oakland police spokesperson have asked residents and visitors to avoid the area. At 2:18 p.m., the California Highway Patrol issued a Sig-alert closing Interstate 580’s eastbound and westbound Keller Avenue off-ramps, just over a half-mile from the incident, with no estimated time of reopening. Drivers were advised to use alternate routes.
“It’s just a sad reality,“ said Chris, a special education teacher who declined to give his last name. He shuttled students to staging ground for their parents to pick them up. “I never want kids to endure this kind of thing.”
Lori Smith, the principal at Bay Tech, said the school went into lockdown for about 1.5 hours, as staff and students waited for police to escort them off campus. Smith said she is already processing how to move her school forward toward healing.
“We don’t want our students to ever feel like this is normal,” she said.
The incident comes less than a day after a press conference where Oakland police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said the department will call on all available resources, adding more officers to high-crime neighborhoods and eight officers to a criminal investigative division in hopes of clearing crimes faster and increasing public safety.
It also comes nearly exactly one month after an injury shooting at the city’s Madison Park Academy middle and school campus. A 12-year-old boy faces several felony charges in that incident, including discharge of a firearm, in the shooting of a 13-year-old boy on Aug. 29.
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(Mercury News staff photographer Dylan Bouscher contributed to this report.)
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