WELLINGTON, Fla. _ Two people are confirmed shot at a football game between Palm Beach Central and William T. Dwyer high schools, and authorities said they do not have anyone in custody.
School officials confirmed late Friday that neither of the victims is a student.
At the first report of trouble, the game stopped; players and coaches left the field and fans began moving out of the bleachers in confusion. Law enforcement officers with rifles were seen running.
The shots erupted after a group of people "got into an altercation," Palm Beach County Sheriff's spokeswoman Teri Barbera said. She did not elaborate.
Wellington Mayor Anne Gerwig said authorities found one victim on the school property and took him by Trauma Hawk to Delray Medical Center .She said the other person was taken by a friend to Wellington Regional Medical Center and then airlifted to Delray Medical.
PBSO's Barbera did not immediately have the victims' conditions and was unable to immediately provide their genders or ages.
"Suspect information and motive of the altercation is unknown at this time," she said. She said Palm Beach County Schools police have asked the sheriff's violent crimes division to take over the investigation.
A helicopter was seen landing on the field as a man was treated on the running track.
Unaccompanied students attending the game were being escorted to the bus loop by law enforcement, and parents needing to pick up children were to travel there as well, schools spokeswoman Kathy Burstein said. She said Dwyer players were being taken back to their school.
"Parents, there are plenty of law enforcement on site _ students are safe and awaiting pick up," Burstein said.
The shooting occurred with Central leading with about eight minutes left in the game.
Lynn Monnette had come with her husband and another son to see her son Matt, who plays offense for Central. As the fourth quarter ran down, the normal hum of the crowd was interrupted.
"We heard four pops. It was under where the band sits at the south end of the bleachers," Monnette said as she sat in traffic trying to get out of the parking lot. Behind her, sirens wailed.
Within seconds, she said, "shoes were flying everywhere. Personal belongings. And people were screaming and running."
It took only a few more seconds, she said, for a massive police presence to arrive.
"We saw lights instantly," she said. "We're all waiting and finally the school security came through and said, 'We're evacuating. The police want us evacuated. We need you to leave now.' That's when we saw the SWAT people."
She said she was able to connect with her younger son, who had been with friends in another corner of the stands, and with Matt, who'd been herded into the Central locker room with the rest of his team.
"He (Matt) said when he heard the shots he started running off the field," she said.
Dwyer players, the visitors, had no locker room to go to and were led to a corner of the field.
Central sophomore Leonardo Moreno, 15, was in the stands Friday night when he saw the football players running off the field for cover.
"I saw people running and screaming and crying and was like, 'Oh my God, what happened?'" he said.
Someone told him there had been a shooting so he squatted in the stands, then stood and started to run. He found his friend and younger brother before finding a way off campus and toward Forest Hill Boulevard.
There he reached his mother Veronica by phone. Tearful and shaking, she embraced the teens in the parking lot of the Chase Bank at Forest Hill and State Road 7.
Leonardo said this was his second high school football game.
"I had so much fun at the last one," he said, his voice trembling. "And then this happens."
"It was just a normal Friday night game and everybody's playing, everybody's having a good time," Ivan Najera, a junior kicker for Central, told The Palm Beach Post. "And then out of nowhere four shots went off by the bus loop area, and kids start running everywhere. Kids from the bleachers were running everywhere and no one knew what to do. It's crazy."
"It's horrible," Wellington Mayor Gerwig said from Hollywood, where she and three other council members are attending the Florida League of Cities annual conference.
They were monitoring the situation from their hotel room, she said, adding that she has been in touch with PBSO.
"Right now we're just trying to get the most information we can," she said.
The teams were meeting for the Kickoff Classic, a preseason showcase of two teams considered contenders for the state championship.
