A Berkeley elementary school teacher remains in critical condition after she was shot in the neck Saturday, struck by a stray bullet as she drove down the Richmond street on her way to pick up her teenage son.
The teacher, 52-year-old Claire Dugan, instructs fourth graders at Berkeley's Cragmont Elementary. She was driving on the 2200 block of Cutting Boulevard when she was hit and subsequently crashed her vehicle, reports ABC 7.
“I hear the boom, boom, boom, then I went outside, and they were shooting,” one witness told CBS 5.
The bullet that struck Dugan was the second Richmond area shooting of the day. The previous gunfire led to a crash on Interstate 580 near Regatta Boulevard. According to authorities, the victim in the day's first shooting is also in critical condition.
A spokesman with the Berkeley Unified School District, Mark Coplan, spoke with ABC 7 about the incident.
"The whole school community is in pain over such a senseless shooting of a dedicated career teacher," said Copland. "It's really unfortunate when this happens in any community and it could have happened to any one of us. Hopefully all of the energy by the authorities is going out to find whoever was responsible for this," he continued.
Dugan has students as young as nine years old, and parents and school administrators are in the position of attempting to explain to the children why their teacher had been hurt.
A mother whose twin daughters are in Dugan's class, Kinchasa Taylor, shared her approach with ABC 7, saying she intended to "just help them with whatever emotion they're feeling."
No arrests have been made in connection to the shooting.
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