A teenage student was shot in the leg at a middle school south of Miami Friday afternoon, sending the campus into lockdown.
Miami-Dade Police said investigators were questioning a classmate who allegedly brought the firearm inside a backpack to Redland Middle School in Homestead.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesman John Schuster said he believes the gun was fired accidentally, striking a boy in the leg.
The victim, who was not identified, was airlifted to Miami Children's Hospital where he is reportedly in stable condition.
Witness Pablo Sanchez, 12, told NBC6 the gun fired when a student in history class dropped his bookbag:
The victim was shot in his calf and couldn't walk, and he was gushing blood as he lay on the floor, Sanchez said.
"And so then, what I’ve seen most of the time is that when you’re bleeding a lot you have to put pressure on it, so I took off my shirt, and some girl, she put pressure on it,” he said.
He said he learned to wrap his shirt around his classmate's calf by watching television.
The school was placed on a "code red" lockdown, with children kept inside until about half an hour after normal dismissal.
"It's not pretty to know that's happening here," a mother who arrived on scene after a text from her son told WSVN.
The Redland incident is not Homestead's first student shooting this year. In November, 13-year-old Lourdes Guzman was fatally shot in front of her little sister on board a school bus after a classmate carried a handgun on board.