Boy, 12, faces battery charge in US school shooting

Psychiatric Detention

The shooting incident lasted just 10 seconds before a teacher, identified as John Masterson, stepped forward and persuaded Campbell to put down his gun, officials said.

Campbell could face a potential maximum sentence of confinement in a juvenile detention facility until age 21, Roswell-based District Attorney Janetta Hicks of the Fifth District said in an email.

Campbell was being held at a child psychiatric hospital in Albuquerque about 170 miles northwest of Roswell, the charging documents said.

A judge on Tuesday ordered the boy to undergo mental health evaluation and treatment, Hicks said. No hearings are currently scheduled in the case, she said.

"We are horribly sad over this tragedy on so many levels," they wrote in the statement, which was also signed by the boy's grandparents.

The shooting was the second at a US middle school in the last three months and comes in the midst of a contentious national debate on gun control that intensified after a young gunman killed 26 people at an elementary school in Connecticut.

In October, a 12-year-old boy in Sparks, Nevada, opened fire at his school, killing a teacher and wounding two students before killing himself.

The Connecticut shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown in December 2012 prompted President Barack Obama to call for sweeping new gun control measures.

Most of Obama's proposals were defeated in Congress, but his administration this month sought new regulations aimed at clarifying restrictions on gun ownership for the mentally ill and bolstering a database used for firearms background checks.