An altercation between two people at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas that escalated into gunfire left 4 people hospitalized and several area schools on lockdown.

Major Armando Tello of the Harris County Sheriff's Office at a press conference said 3 unidentified people including the two involved in the altercation were wounded and hospitalized.  They have not yet been charged.

Mark Zaragosa said he had just come out of an EMT class when he saw two people who were injured and stopped to help them. Officers had not yet arrived, he said.

"The two people that I took care of had just minor injuries," Mark Zaragosa told KHOU TV. "One gentleman had a gunshot to the knee and the (other) actually had an entry wound to the lower buttocks area."

A maintenance worker in his mid-50's  was injured and caught in the crossfire and injured in the leg.  A female student suffered a medical incident during the incident. "We don’t know exactly if she had a heart attack or a stroke,” Harris County sheriff's spokeswoman Christina Garza told CNN.

Tello had no comment on reports the shooting was gang related.

A "Safe Campus"

School Chancellor Dr. Richard Carpenter noted this is the first campus shooting and that class will be held on Wednesday as scheduled. "This campus has been safe for 40 years," he told reporters. He said the campus is gun free but staff cannot check everyone on campus for weapons.

Relatives identified Jody Neal, 24, as one of the people who was shot and said he was taken to Harris Health Ben Taub Hospital Emergency Center with gunshots in his arm, stomach and leg.

"He was sitting in the study room. There (were) three people on the computer and a guy walked up the stairs and opened fire on him," Stacy Neal, Jody's sister, told KPRC-TV. "They said it was just one guy that came in with a gun."

"Situation" Led To Gunfire

The school said  the shooting started as a "situation" between two students that led to gunfire in a courtyard area between the library and cafeteria areas according to Carpenter.

A witness told CNN he heard a gunman say, "I don't want to fight you; I'm not trying to go to jail." She said he "actually turned away from the situation" at first but eventually pulled a gun out of a backpack. She said she heard about nine shots.

KTRK TV reported a second gunman ran off campus after the shooting towards the woods near George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Lone Star student Daniel Flores, 19, said he was in a tutoring lab on the second floor doing homework when he heard what he heard six to seven shots.

"I didn't think they were shots," he said. "It sounded like someone was kicking a door."

About 60 people were in the lab, and they began running out of the room once they realized the sound was gunfire, he said. They fled to a nearby student services center, where authorities kept them there for about 30 minutes before letting them go.

The school in north Harris County posted a shelter-in-place order on the school web site, early in the afternoon urging students, faculty and staff to take shelter where they are. Nearby Aldine ISD has four campuses near Lone Star on lockdown. Dunn Elementary, Parker Intermediate and Nimitz 9th grade campus and Nimitz HS campus were on lockdown according to KTRK TV. Buses have arrived to take students home.

The Lone Star College is a 2-year public community college in Houston comprised of six college campuses. It's primarily a commuter-campus with about 75,600 total undergraduates, according to CollegeBoard.org.

This is a breaking story. Check back for more updates.


The Associated Press contributed to this story

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