Female student aged just TWELVE is taken into custody after shooting two 15-year-olds inside an LA middle school classroom

Two teens were shot inside a Los Angeles middle school classroom Thursday morning and police arrested a 12-year-old female student 'person of interest', authorities said.

Gunfire erupted shortly before 9am at Salvador Castro Middle School in the West-lake neighborhood.  

A 15-year-old male was shot in the temple and a 15-year-old female shot in the wrist. The boy is in stable condition, while the female is in fair condition. Both are expected to survive.

Three others were hospitalized with minor injuries not related to gunshot wounds - including an 11-year-old boy, a 12-year-old girl and a 30-year-old woman,

School Police Department Chief Steven Zipperman said.

TV footage showed a girl with dark hair and wearing a sweatshirt being led out of the school in handcuffs. 

At first, authorities said they had take a female student suspect into custody, but later said she was a 'person of interest'. The girl's name and age have not been officially released, but Fox 11 learned that she is 12. 

No motive has been released.  

Two 15-year-old students were shot inside a Los Angeles school on Thursday, and a female suspect was seen being taken from the scene in handcuffs

It's believed that the female student is just 12 years of age. She's seen above again in police custody 

One of the victims is seen being loaded into an ambulance after the morning shooting. A 15-year-old boy was shot in the head and is in stable condition while a girl of the same age was shot in the wrist and is in fair condition

Students at the school are seen evacuating with the help of police after the shooting 

Sgt Edward Bernal of the Los Angeles School Police Department said a gun was recovered.

Authorities said the call came from Salvador B. Castro Middle School, adding confusing since the two victims are high school age. NBC LA later reported that the shooting took place in a mixed-grade elective class. It's possible that students at the two high schools that share a campus with the middle school are also able to take the same electives.  

After police secured the school, classes went back on as usual, but parents were allowed to pick their children up early if they wanted to  

Elizabeth Acevedo and her son Andres, three, wait for news of her son, Jose, an 8th grade student at the Belmont High School in Los Angeles on Thursday

Another reacts while crossing the street past police vehicles outside a roadblock to Salvadore Castro Middle School in Los Angeles on Thursday

As soon as news of the shooting broke, parents rushed to the school to confirm their children were safe

The middle school is considered small for the area, with an enrollment of 355 students.

The school building used to be used by Belmont High when more students attended.

Last year, 92 per cent of the students at the middle school were Latino and most come from low-income families.

The campus was put on lockdown shortly after the shooting. Students were led to safety by police officers, who then patted them down before releasing them. 

'The school has been declared safe at this point. There is no more safety threat,' Zipperman said. 

Students were expected to return to class once the school was deemed safe. However, parents are being allowed to pick their children up early if they wish. 

'We know this a very traumatic incident for all the children involved, particularly inside that classroom,' Zipperman said. 

Above, another look at concerned parents waiting for word from police at the school  

No motive for the shooting has been released. A woman is seen talking to police and fire officials  

It's unclear how the shooter was able to get the gun and smuggle it into the school, Above, cops on the scene on Thursday 

The Los Angeles Unified School District has been conducting daily random searches for weapons using metal detective wands ever since 1993, when two students were killed in back-to-back shootings.

However, an audit last April of 20 schools found that some schools failed to do the searches daily and that a quarter of them didn't have the right metal-detecting wands.

FEMALE SCHOOL SHOOTERS: A RARITY 

One of the first school shooters was female - Brenda Spencer

The fact that a female student was taken into custody was surprising since females do not usually commit school shootings or mass shootings in general. 

However, they aren't unheard of. One of the first modern school shooters was a girl. In 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer shot and killed the principal and custodian at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, a school across the street from where she lived. When a reporter asked why she did it, Spencer said 'I don't like Mondays'.  

When it comes to traditional school shootings, involving a perpetrator who attends the school that is targeted, men have always been the shooter in the U.S.

In general, women are less violent than men - accounting for just 10 to 13 per cent of all homicides. And in the rare situations in which women do commit violent crimes, they are less likely to use a gun.

'We do not know yet ... how our young person on this campus ended up having the ability to have access to a firearm and bring it onto a campus,' Zipperman said. 

Jocelyn Lopez told KTLA that her 13-year-old younger sister, a 7th grader, was in the classroom where the shooting took place.

She said her sister is fine, and has been texting with her. 

The fact that a female student was taken into custody was surprising since females do not usually commit school shootings or mass shootings in general. 

However, they aren't unheard of. One of the first modern school shooters was a girl.

In 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer shot and killed the principal and custodian at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, a school across the street from where she lived.

When a reporter asked Spencer why she did it, she said 'I don't like Mondays'.  

There are a few other examples. 

In 1988, 30-year-old Laurie Dann shot and killed a boy and injured five other students at an elementary school in Winnetka, Illinois.

Jillian Robbins, a 19-year-old Army-trained sharpshooter shot and killed one 21-year-old student and wounded three more at Penn State University in 1996.

Two students at Louisiana Technical Institute were shot and killed by 23-year-old nursing student Latina Williams in 2008.

And in 2010, a biology professor at the University of Alabama shot six of her colleagues.

In 2014, a 17-year-old girl in Pennsylvania was arrested after cops discovered she was planning an attack on her high school and wanted to be 'the first female shooter'.

In another troubling incident in 2016, two teens at a high school in Arizona died from the same bullet, in an apparent murder suicide.

But when it comes to traditional school shootings, involving a perpetrator who attends the school that is targeted, men have always been the shooter in the U.S.  

In general, women are less violent than men - accounting for just 10 to 13 per cent of all homicides according to LiveScience.com.

And in the rare situations in which women do commit violent crimes, they are less likely to use a gun. Women perpetrators account for just eight per cent of firearm crimes, while taking up a more predominant 40 per cent of poisonings.

Above, a view of the joint Belmont High/Salvador Castro Middle School campus in the Las Angeles neighborhood of West-lake.

DAILY MAIL