(NEWSER) – One student remains critically wounded after this morning's school shooting near Bakersfield, California, but it's becoming clear that the quick action of two school officials prevented a greater tragedy, police say. The AP,LA Times, and Bakersfield Californian agree on the general sequence: A 16-year-old student burst into a classroom in Taft Union High School, shot a student in the chest, and missed hitting another. The victims were thought to be specific targets. The teacher, identified as Ryan Heber, began talking to the shooter while making sure the rest of the students were safely evacuated. A campus supervisor soon arrived in the classroom, and they convinced the shooter to put down his gun—which he had been waving around—before police arrived.

• Sheriff: "The heroics of these two people goes without saying," says Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood. "They could have just as easily ... tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't. They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."

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