Police say a teenager killed himself after shooting a former classmate three times in a Missouri high school’s parking lot July 25.
Payton Esterline, 18, is listed in critical condition at a local hospital after he was shot three times by former classmate Paul Porter in the Ava High School parking lot around 2 a.m., reports ky3.com. Witnesses say Porter then committed suicide before police arrived.
The two teens, who were recent graduates of Ava High, had reportedly gone to the parking lot to fight. Police say ten to 15 other teens went to the school to watch the altercation.
Sadly, police were notified of the potential for violence minutes before the actual shooting.
“I told them to call the cops, because I knew he had a gun before he came there,” classmate Chance Dobbs said of Porter. “We called [the police]; they just got there too late.”
Responding officers heard the gunshots but arrived to find Porter already dead.
“After he shot Payton and he swung the gun over at me, and I hit the ground, heard a gunshot, and got up, and running around the truck, and Payton was under the truck,” Dobbs told ky3. “He shot two more times under the truck and Payton ran off, and everybody else ran off. Paul was standing over the truck, and I ran up to him, and he shot himself when I got up there, and I grabbed ahold of him and just held him there and just watched him and screamed,” Dobbs said.
Porter was reportedly distraught over a recent break up and had been sending disturbing messages and images to his former girlfriend.
Read Next: Dallas College Police Chief Outlines Path of Killer
