The authorities in Colorado on Thursday named the 16-year-old student suspected of shooting two other students at Evergreen High School on Wednesday, and said that he had been “radicalized by an extremist network,” which they did not identify.
The suspect, Desmond Holly, died of self-inflicted injuries on Wednesday night after he opened fire that day, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
“He was radicalized by some extremist network,” a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, Jacki Kelley, told reporters at a news briefing outside the school in Evergreen, Colo., a mountain town about 30 miles southwest of Denver.
She did not describe the network, saying only that “we want to at least give you that much about, maybe, the mind set for him.”
She said that he “brought quite a bit of ammunition with him and he continued to reload.”
According to the authorities, Mr. Holly opened fire around 12:30 p.m. local time, using a revolver handgun. One student inside the school and another outside, Ms. Kelley said, adding that the attack had spilled onto a roadway behind the school.
As of Wednesday night, one of the victims was in stable condition and one was in critical.
“We’re very, very grateful that there were not more injuries, but saddened that there were any,” Ms. Kelley said.
The authorities said on Thursday that they had obtained warrants for the suspect’s home, phone and locker, but did not say more about when searches had taken place or what they might have uncovered. The motive for the shooting remains under investigation, Ms. Kelley added, saying that the authorities would be looking at his social media pages and more.
There were multiple crime scenes, inside and outside the school, with many windows and lockers shot up, she said. “We’re finding spent rounds, unspent rounds,” she said.
Evergreen High School will be closed for the rest of the week, and possibly into next week, she said, because of the significant cleanup that the three-story school needs.
She said that the gunman had tried to gain access to areas that were locked down.
“I can’t praise the staff and the students enough for doing what they learned to do,” she said, adding, “They did the right thing. They locked down.”
Evergreen High School is part of Jefferson County Public Schools, a district that includes Columbine High School, the site of a school shooting in 1999 that was one of the deadliest in the United States at the time.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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