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Perry High School shooting

A mass shooting occurred on January 4, 2024, at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, United States. Seventeen-year-old student Dylan Butler shot five students and three staff members before killing himself. One of the wounded students, a sixth-grader, died the same day and one of the shot staff members, principal Dan Marburger, died 10 days later from injuries sustained during the shooting. It was the first school shooting of 2024.

Background

Perry High School and Perry Middle School are part of the Perry Community School District in Perry, Iowa. The two schools share a building and are connected by a hallway adjacent to the cafeteria, where the shooting occurred. The cafeteria hosts a breakfast program for all middle and high school students before school.

Perpetrator

17-year-old Dylan Jesse Butler (October 11, 2006 - January 4, 2024), a Perry resident and student of Perry High School, was identified by police as the shooter. Butler's friends and mother described him as being "a quiet person who had been bullied for years" and speculated that the "last straw" may have been school officials' failure to intervene when his younger sister began to be bullied as well. The method Butler used to acquire firearms underage is unknown and under investigation.

Authorities have not provided a motive for the shooting. Butler was reported to have made social media posts before the shooting, including a TikTok post showing him in a Perry High School bathroom stall with a duffel bag, captioned with the text "now we wait". The post was accompanied by the KMFDM song "Stray Bullet", which had been used on the personal website of Eric Harris, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre.

Shooting

Authorities were first alerted to the shooting at 7:37 a.m. Central Standard Time when middle and high school students were having breakfast before school. According to his daughter, Principal Dan Marburger tried to approach Butler to calm him down and potentially distract him before being wounded, an action credited with allowing students to escape the area. At least one student reported the shooting to their parents at 7:36 a.m.

At 7:44 a.m., the first wave of first responders arrived at the scene. When police entered the school, which was sheltering-in-place, they found the perpetrator armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun and dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The perpetrator's death was ruled a suicide. In a later search of the school, police found a homemade bomb and disarmed it safely.

The middle school attached to the high school was cleared by 8:25 a.m., and the high school was cleared by 8:27 a.m. A nearby elementary school was dismissed by 8:32 a.m. By 9:27 a.m., the FBI and the ATF were on the scene. While some students ran to homes close to the campus after evacuating, others went to reunification centers such as the National Guard Armory, the Perry Lutheran Homes, and the McCreary Community building.

Later in the day, 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff, a sixth-grade student at Perry Middle School, was pronounced dead. Those injured included Principal Marburger, who died 10 days later, two other staff members, and four students, one of whom was in critical condition. As of January 5, 2024, authorities have yet to release the names of the other injured.

Reactions

A memorial was planned and held at a local park the same day of the shooting. A local Methodist church offered their building as a sanctuary for those impacted. At least one GoFundMe was created to help those affected.

Local and state education, police, and gun-related bodies and associations released statements supporting affected members of the community and sympathizing with the victims of and families affected by the shooting. A statement from the White House press secretary called the shooting a "heartbreaking and heart-wrenching" event, calling on Congress to act against gun violence. Several political figures, including Vivek Ramaswamy, who was holding a campaign event in Perry on the same day, Governor Kim Reynolds, Nikki Haley, Joni Ernst, Zach Nunn, Chuck Grassley, Rita Hart, and Brenna Bird released statements or social media posts offering condolences to the victims of the attack.

According to NBC News, far-right figures such as Libs of TikTok, Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk "zeroed in" on LGBT symbols displayed by Butler's social media accounts to suggest that he was transgender.