Who is Dylan Butler? 17-Years-Old Iowa School Shooting Suspect Who Killed One, Injured 5

An American teenager is suspected of unleashing a violent assault at Perry High School on Thursday, killing a sixth-grader and injuring five others, including the principal, before turning the gun on himself.

Dylan Butler, 17 — who had reportedly endured relentless harassment since elementary school — armed with a pump-action shotgun, a small-caliber handgun, and a rudimentary explosive device, acted alone.

Dylan’s motive remains unclear. His distraught family members mentioned the school’s lack of intervention as the tipping point, according to the New York Post. The authorities are looking into “a number of social media posts” he made around the time of the shooting, AP reported.

A US law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said federal and state investigators were interviewing Butler’s friends and analysing Butler’s social media profiles, including posts on TikTok and Reddit.

‘Now we wait’

Shortly before Thursday’s shooting, Butler posted a photo on TikTok inside the bathroom of Perry High School. The photo was captioned “now we wait” and the song “Stray Bullet” by the German band KMFDM, famously linked to the Columbine High School massacre, accompanied it.

Other videos showed him emulating characters from horror shows and posing with firearms. The firearms’ ownership remains unclear; Iowa’s lenient gun laws don’t mandate permits for purchase or carrying, requiring only background checks for handgun buyers without permits.

Perry, a town of about 7,900, is about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines, the state’s capital city. The community is devastated, and one survivor remains in critical condition. The attack on the first day back after winter break is part of a national epidemic of gun violence in US schools.

There were 346 incidents in which a gun was brandished or fired at school or a bullet hit school property in 2023, according to a US School Shooting Database. That was the highest of any year in the website’s data, which goes back to 1966, and represented the third record-setting year in a row. Four such incidents have already taken place in 2024.

(With agency inputs)