A 17-year-old runaway boy was shot in the wrist by a police officer at a Honolulu high school on Tuesday, after the teen attacked three members of the Honolulu Police Department, according to reports.
Roosevelt High School officials called police after the boy, whom they recognized as a runaway, showed up at the school at about 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reported.
The boy had been a student at the public high school near downtown but wasn’t registered for classes there this semester, State Department of Education spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said.
Maj. Richard Robinson, Commander of the Criminal Investigations Department for Honolulu police, told the AP that the boy lunged at officers when they arrived to take him into custody — cutting one with a knife in the torso and punching two others.
One of the officers then fired his gun twice, striking the teen at least once in the wrist, officials said. The teen was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
No other students were hurt in the incident at school.
Roosevelt High School sent an alert to parents saying that "the situation is under control."
The high school was on lockdown Tuesday morning, but the Hawaii Department of Education tweeted that Roosevelt High students were being released at 10 a.m. local time "due to a campus incident."
The officers involved were not seriously hurt, police said. The officer who fired the shot was placed on administrative leave.
Tenari Maafala, president of the state’s police officers union, told the AP that the knife posed a clear threat and officers are trained to stop a threat -- regardless of the suspect's age.
"They didn't come here looking to shoot somebody," Maafala said.
Some students interviewed as they were leaving campus told NBC station KHNL they weren’t told what was going on as they were put on lockdown, but later learned on the news about the shooting.
“It was pretty scary I was just wondering what happened. I thought it was a drill,” said one student.
Noah Powell, a 16-year-old junior, told the AP the shooting happened in a counselor's office.
Roosevelt High School was scheduled to reopen on Wednesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.