Authorities say the 15-year-old brought a .357 revolver from home, and investigators are still trying to determine a motive.
BULVERDE, Texas — A 15-year-old student shot a teacher at Hill Country College Preparatory High School on Monday morning, then fatally shot himself before classes began, authorities said, sending the small Comal ISD campus into lockdown and parents into a long wait for reunification.
The shooting shook a campus built around advanced academics and college preparation and quickly widened into a broader investigation into how the student got the gun, what led up to the attack and whether warning signs were missed. By Tuesday, the Comal County Sheriff’s Office said the student had been struggling in school and failing several classes, the teacher remained hospitalized and the district had closed the campus for the rest of the week.
The first public sign of the crisis came at 8:34 a.m., when the school reported a lockdown. An online schedule listed the start of classes at 8:55 a.m., placing the violence just before the official school day. Authorities later said the shooting happened in a second-floor classroom. Multiple agencies responded, and students were moved by bus to Bulverde Middle School, where parents waited outside for reunification. Comal County Sheriff Mark Reynolds said the situation was contained “very, very quickly.” By the time officials briefed reporters that afternoon, the student was dead at the scene and the teacher had already been taken to a San Antonio hospital. Reynolds said no other students or staff members were hurt. Principal Julie Wiley told families that law enforcement officers were on campus, the building was secure and students and staff were being held in a safe area while the response continued.
By Tuesday morning, investigators had added several important details, but many central questions still had not been answered. The sheriff’s office said the student used a .357 revolver and brought it from home. Detectives seized electronic devices from the home and said they were reviewing them to better understand the student’s actions and any possible motive. Authorities also said the boy appeared to be facing academic trouble and had been failing several classes. Still, officials did not release his name or the teacher’s name, did not describe the teacher’s injuries and did not say whether she had spoken to investigators. They also declined to say who owned the gun, whether the teacher had taught the student and whether anyone at school or at home had seen clear warning signs before the shooting. Reynolds said there was no evidence the student threatened anyone else during the attack, and local reporting said investigators had found no signs of a struggle for control of the weapon.
The campus where the shooting happened is not a large neighborhood high school but a school of choice within Comal Independent School District, with about 250 students and a focus on college readiness and STEAM coursework. District materials describe Hill Country College Preparatory as a campus built for students seeking an academically demanding setting, with classes in areas such as computer science, cybersecurity and engineering. The school opened in August 2020 and later moved to its own campus in Bulverde, a Hill Country community north of San Antonio. That setting gave the shooting an added jolt for families who had chosen the school for its smaller size and academic identity. It also raised questions about security. Reynolds told the San Antonio Express-News that the campus normally has a school resource officer from the Bulverde Police Department, but the officer had not yet arrived when the shooting began. Comal ISD said the officer’s assigned start time matched the campus school day, which the district lists as beginning at 8:55 a.m., after the lockdown alert had already gone out.
As the emergency response gave way to an investigation, officials described a case moving through the slow work of witness interviews, forensic review and evidence collection. No criminal charges were announced Tuesday. The sheriff’s office said investigators would continue tracing the gun, reviewing the devices taken from the student’s home and interviewing students, staff members and relatives. The district first canceled classes for Tuesday and later said the campus would remain closed through the rest of the week. Wiley said counselors would be available for students and families, and she told families that vehicles and other personal belongings left at school would stay secured until the district sent instructions for retrieval. Superintendent John E. Chapman III issued a public message to the school community as the district shifted from crisis management to recovery. For investigators, the next likely milestones are any update on the teacher’s condition, the results of the gun trace and a clearer account of what happened in the classroom in the minutes before the shots were fired.
The longest hours of the day were not at the sheriff’s microphone but outside Bulverde Middle School, where parents stood in line, checked their phones and waited for teenagers to come through the doors. Some prayed quietly. Others tried to reassure one another while piecing together fragments from text alerts and television coverage. Sarah Valdez, the mother of a freshman, told KSAT that the news was painful because school violence had become part of family life. Another parent, Jesse Lopez, said he worried about how hard it would be for his daughter, who has autism, to return after such a traumatic day. Their reactions captured the gap between the swift official description of a contained scene and the slower reality families faced as they tried to account for children who had been locked down, moved by bus and kept behind reunification procedures. On a campus built around future plans, college credit and advanced coursework, the school day instead became a blur of alarms, patrol vehicles, hospital updates and unanswered questions.
As of Tuesday night, authorities still had not released a motive or identified either person publicly. The teacher remained hospitalized, and the next public updates were expected from the sheriff’s office and Comal ISD as investigators continued reviewing evidence and the Bulverde campus stayed closed.
Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.