TAFT, Calif. — The sheriff of Kern County, Calif., says a 16-year-old student shot at a high school in rural Taft is in critical but stable condition.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood says the shooter is a student who walked into a class at Taft Union High School Thursday morning and shot the teen with a shotgun, and then fired at another student but missed. A teacher suffered a minor pellet wound to the head.

Youngblood says the teacher tried to get other students out a back door, then he and another staff member talked the shooter to distract him, and convinced him to put down the gun.