Teacher killed in school shooting

It was the first day after a weeklong holiday.

The students at the Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nevada, were filing off buses and reuniting with friends when they heard a "pop" on Monday.

They fled for their lives before the first bell rang.

Mr Michael Landsberry, a 45-year old maths teacher, ran unarmed across the basketball courts where the shooter, a student in the school, was standing armed with his parents' handgun.

Mr Landsberry, an army veteran, urged the shooter to put the gun down. Instead the boy, who is believed to be 14, shot him.

He then shot himself.

Student Kyle Nucum, 13, told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he watched the boy wearing the school uniform shoot Mr Landsberry.

The student said: "We were at the basketball court and we heard a pop, and everybody was screaming and the teacher came to investigate.

"I thought it was a firecracker at first, but the student was pointing a gun at the teacher after the teacher told him to put it down.

"The student fired a shot at the teacher and the teacher fell and everybody ran away."

The teacher and the shooter were the only two dead.

Two others were injured in the shooting, which comes almost a year after the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 26 people dead.

Mr Landsberry, a veteran Marine and member of the Nevada Army National Guard, had spent the past weekend celebrating his wedding anniversary with wife Sharon, family members said.

The teacher had two stepdaughters, Mail Online reported.

Much-loved Teacher

He had served in several tours of Afghanistan before becoming a much-loved teacher.

Mayor of Sparks Gino Martini told CNN's Piers Morgan on Monday: "Hard to believe that he went through what he did in Afghanistan, to be shot at school."

Mr Landsberry's sister-in-law, Chanda, told the Reno Gazette-Journal: "To hear he was trying to protect those kids doesn't surprise me at all. He could have ducked and hidden, but he didn't. That's not who he is."

One student, Marlene, posted a fond memory of the dead teacher, who was bald, on Twitter.

The pupil wrote: "When I took a picture with Mr Landsberry he always told me, "Wait I gotta make sure my hair looks okay'."

The shooter's name has not been released and the motive for the shooting is still not known.

Before the shooting, witnesses said they could hear the gunman saying, "My life is over. Why are you people making fun of me? Why are you laughing at me?"

Around 20 to 30 students witnessed the multiple shootings.

Parents clung to their teary-eyed children at an evacuation centre, while the community struggled to make sense of the latest episode of school violence to rock the US.

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