A freshman football player and Homecoming prince apparently distraught over a recent breakup with his girlfriend opened fire in a Washington state high school cafeteria Friday, killing one classmate and injuring four others before fatally shooting himself, authorities said.

Authorities identified the shooter at Marysville-Pilchuck High School as Jaylen Fryberg. He is the son of a prominent family in the Tulalip tribe of Native Americans.

It was not clear whether Fryberg targeted the students or what motivated his attack, but postings on social media suggested that he was upset over personal relationships.

“It won’t last ... it’ll never last,” he said in his last posting on Twitter on Thursday.


Two days earlier he wrote: “It breaks me.... It actually does.... I know it seems like I’m sweating it off.... But I’m not.... And I never will be.”

Police said the dead student was a girl. Four others — two girls and two boys — were hospitalized, with at least three in critical condition, officials said.

A school official reported the shooting at 10:39 a.m., according to Marysville Police Cmdr. Robert Lamoureux.

Someone pulled a fire alarm in the minutes after the shooting, prompting scores of students to evacuate to a playing field as they had been trained.


They were stopped by other students and teachers, who ordered them back to their classrooms to take cover.

The gunman fired multiple shots. “He was angry; I heard yelling,” said Erick Cervantes, 16. “I heard a shot and then I saw a gun.”

Cervantes was one of about 30 students and staffers who witnessed the shooting.

“He shot the kids and then he stood there. I’m pretty sure he tried to reload. A teacher came out and tried to stop him; I heard a shot and saw him

on the ground,” Cervantes said.


As Cervantes watched, a teacher checked one of the fallen students for a pulse. Cervantes called 911.

“I’m still pretty shocked,” he said. “I still have a bunch of images in my head: looking down seeing bodies, blood everywhere.”

Fryberg’s friends said it was not clear what sparked the shooting.

Austyn Neal, 14, who had science class with Fryberg, said he heard Fryberg had been bullied for being Native American.


“He seemed mad yesterday,” Neal said, adding that Fryberg sat with his head down and “didn’t really talk.”

Another friend said that Fryberg had conflicts with at least one other student.

“He had gotten in a fistfight with another football player about two weeks ago,” said Cesar Zatarain, 16, a fellow football player.

But Zatarain attended marketing class with Fryberg on Friday morning before the shooting and didn’t notice anything amiss.


“He was always laughing,” Zatarain said. “I just saw the kid a couple of hours ago, and now he’s dead.”

After the shooting, Zatarain headed for the school’s gym, where he huddled against a wall with more than 100 students until police arrived and escorted them to the football field.

Students were evacuated from there by school bus to a nearby church, where they were reunited with frantic parents.

At an afternoon briefing, Lamoureux said the students and staffers who witnessed the shooting were still being questioned. He would not say what motivated the attack or what type of gun was used.


He said authorities were confident that the shooter acted alone.

Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring said he had been in contact with state and local leaders, including leaders of the Tulalip tribe.

Marysville, with a population of 60,000, is about 35 miles north of Seattle. The shooting is the second to rock a Seattle-area campus in the last five months. In June, a gunman opened fire at Seattle Pacific University, killing one student and injuring three.

“We’re deeply saddened by the tragic events today,” Nehring said.


The four injured students who survived the shooting were taken to nearby Providence Regional Medical Center, where Dr. Joanne Roberts said some of them were being treated for serious head wounds with massive bleeding. One girl was still in surgery late Friday, she said.

Roberts had already met with more than two dozen relatives of the injured on Friday.

“Our community is going to mourn this for years,” she said, adding that even seasoned hospital staffers “will all go home tonight and cry.”

maria.laganga@latimes.com


james.queally@latimes.com

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

La Ganga reported from Marysville, Queally from Los Angeles and Hennessy-Fiske from Houston.