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San Bernardino School Closed Following Murder-Suicide

A police officer stands guard outside North Park School after a fatal shooting at the elementary school in San Bernardino, Calif., April 10, 2017.
Associated Press
A police officer stands guard outside North Park School after a fatal shooting at the elementary school in San Bernardino, Calif., April 10, 2017.
San Bernardino School Closed Following Murder-Suicide
San Bernardino School Closed Following Murder-Suicide GUEST: Kyle Stokes, Education reporter, KPCC

Our top story on midday edition North Park elementary school in San Bernardino is closed today and the city is in mourning for victims of Monday's fatal shootings. Police say a man was given permission to enter the school grounds after which he shot and killed his wife was a teacher at the school and an eight-year-old student before turning the gun on himself. Joining me as reporter Kyle Stokes welcome to the program. Good to be here. Today tell us how the shooter made it inside the building with a gun. What you have to understand that more elementary school is that what a spokesperson for the district described as one of the older aliens in the district is that there is not necessarily a central bus and system it is like a lot of schools in Southern California. You simply walk in and check in in the office and the office is supposed to scream the people who come into the single point of entry. District procedure would be according to the superintendent of the local school district that the probably cannot be accompanied to the classroom. Frederik Andersen was married to the teacher who was killed and so staff knew of the relationship they were not aware of marital troubles between those two they have been separated. The staff did not know that the things that go on back and not tell he gained access to the building. What can you tell us about the apparent target and her relationship with her estranged husband. We have a little bit more profile information essentially on her. She had been a teacher in the San Bernardino school district for the last 10 years as a special needs teacher. A lot of it was spent at Cajon high school. She had been at North Park high school -- elementary school since 2015. She had been married -- was sort of learned information today that she had been married for just a few months to Frederik Andersen. That followed before your relationship that they had had that they were married until January. In March marital problems arose they separated and Smith moved out she has adult children in the area so she had been staying with family and we learned that that was the sort of underlying factor that contributed to the incident yesterday. To know the condition of the nine-year-old who was also injured in the shooting. Apparently doing well according to the police chief. He is in serious condition in the moment that the police chief in San Bernardino said at the press conference that he is in relatively good spirit and said when he was interviewed by law enforcement yesterday that the student was in good spirit and was watching cartoons yesterday so all indications are good there. Describe what you saw and heard on the scene yesterday They were confused about where they were supposed to go. Students and parents were reunited. Sometimes actually went even further to the west yet another half-mile away from elementary school at Cal State San Bernardino which is where students were evacuated to the some parents have gone there and not to the pickup who is at Cajon high school. Once they got there and settled in it was like a long intense waiting game for the parents that were there. A lot of them just wanted to give side of the kids but we did learn from a lot of parents eventually hearing that the school district had informed everyone in the school as soon as they had notified them of the two students that were injured on the one that died as soon as those parents have been notified the rest of the parents were notified that the parents of the two windows students had been notified so that released a lot of the stress and attention so I think a lot of parents just wanted to give the kids a hug at that point. Did you speak with the students directly or to the mostly overhear the conversation with the parent A lot of the students in relieving did not say much. I did not feel it appropriate to be asking students a lot of pointed questions about what they had seen or heard but I got a chance to speak with one student who mentioned that he heard a lot of people were nervous and there were some people crying and of course we saw a lot of images on television as a very orderly and calm evacuation so obviously probably a very scary situation. A lot of them were not say much. It is a lot to take in. I've been speaking with reporter Kyle Stokes in Los Angeles thank you. You are welcome.

How To Talk To Kids About Violence
How To Talk To Kids About Violence GUEST:Dr. Jeffrey Rowe, supervising psychiatrist, San Diego County Behavioral Health Services

Students dove under desks when a man walked into his estranged wife's elementary school classroom and opened fire without saying a word, killing her and an 8-year-old student and wounding a 9-year-old before fatally shooting himself, authorities said.

Some six weeks earlier, 53-year-old Cedric Anderson was a newlywed calling his 53-year-old wife Karen Smith an "angel" in one of many social media posts professing his love.

San Bernardino police have said nothing of what might have motivated Anderson to open fire in the special-education classroom at North Park Elementary School on Monday.

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"No one has come forward to say they saw this coming," police Chief Jarrod Burguan said, though Anderson had a history of weapons, domestic violence and possible drug charges that predated the brief marriage.

2 Adults Dead, 2 Students Hospitalized In San Bernardino School Shooting

School district officials said classes at North Park would be canceled for at least Tuesday and Wednesday. Counselors were made available at a nearby middle school for students, family and staff.

The shooting came 15 months after a terror attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at a meeting of county employees. Husband-and-wife shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were later killed in a gunbattle with authorities.

Nine-year-old Marissa Perez said she got under a table as soon as she saw the gunman enter her classroom Monday.

"She keeps telling me 'My teacher got shot, my friend got shot,'" her mother, Elizabeth Barajas, said as she clutched her daughter's blood-stained sweatshirt.

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Marissa said the shooter didn't speak as he began shooting. One of her friends was hit, she added, pointing to her abdomen.

What appears to be Anderson's Facebook page features many public declarations of love for Smith between statements of religious devotion before his last public post on March 15.

"She knows when to ignore me," Anderson said with a laugh in a short video posted Feb. 27. "Well, it makes a happy marriage."

Anderson had posted that he "loved being married to Karen Smith-Anderson!" and shared a photo of the two of them on March 4 during what he described as a date night.

The page also had several photos of his wedding to Smith and their honeymoon among the scenic red rocks of Sedona, Arizona.

But Smith left him about a month and a half after their late-January marriage, police and family members said.

Smith's mother, Irma Sykes, said her daughter had been friends with Anderson for about four years before they got married.

"She thought she had a wonderful husband, but she found out he was not wonderful at all," Sykes told the Los Angeles Times. "He had other motives," Sykes said. "She left him and that's where the trouble began. She broke up with him and he came out with a different personality. She decided she needed to leave him." She did not elaborate further.

Sykes said her daughter was a dedicated teacher who took up the profession about 10 years ago after her four children grew up.

School staffers knew Anderson, who followed the proper protocol and got into the school through the front office by saying he had to drop something off for Smith, school district officials said.

Smith was his target and the two boys were hit as he was firing at her, the police chief said. Anderson emptied and reloaded the gun before turning it on himself.

There were 15 students in the special needs classroom ranging from first to fourth grade, along with two adult aides, Burguan said.

Eight-year-old Jonathan Martinez was airlifted to a hospital, where he was declared dead. The 9-year-old boy, whose name was not released, remained hospitalized Monday night.

The 600 other students at the school were bused to safety at California State University's San Bernardino campus, several miles away, after many walked off campus hand-in-hand, escorted by police.

Panicked parents had to wait hours before being reunited with them at a nearby high school.

Holly Penalber, whose 9-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter attend the school, called it "every parent's worst nightmare." She said the long wait was "frustrating but also understandable."

Once a major rail hub and citrus producer, the city of 216,000 people filed for bankruptcy in 2012 after struggling to pay its employees despite steep cuts to the budget. It was hit hard by the great recession, seeing rises in unemployment and violent crime.

An overflow crowd gathered at sunset at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in San Bernardino to mourn and pray for the victims and survivors of Monday's shooting. One man wore a shirt that read "stop the violence in SB."

"Sometimes all we can do is cry. And today is the day for that," Bishop Gerald R. Barnes told the gathering. "We'll get up again. We'll move on. We'll become stronger. But today is the day to cry."

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