Student, Officer In Arkansas Shootout

A truant seventh-grader and a police officer exchanged gunfire Thursday in a hay field near the boy's Prairie, Ark. junior school.

The 12-year-old boy stormed off campus after an altercation. Authorities believe the he obtained the shotgun after he'd gone.

The boy was hit in the abdomen during the 10-round exchange with the police officer assigned to the rural school district.

Sergeant Greg Lovett was shot in the face, back and chest. A police spokesperson said none of the injuries were life-threatening.

Witness Tilman Tollett tells CBS affiliate KFSM-TV that he saw the boy hiding in a ditch as he was driving by and called the police.

He says, "They had me come back up here to try to locate him here in the ditch. At that time he took off running across the field right here and the police officer chased after him... Shortly after that I heard three gun shots."

The boy goes to the same school where six students were charged last year with making death threats.

State police spokeswoman Kim Fontaine said the student opened fire as the officer approached.

KFSM-TV said the student was carrying a small-caliber rifle. Lovett was armed with a 40-caliber service handgun.

Classes continued at the school, a school spokeswoman said.

Prairie Grove is a town of about 1,800 around 10 miles southwest of Fayetteville in the northwest corner of Arkansas.

The school made headlines last October when six boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 15 who called themselves "Prep Killers" were charged with making death threats against classmates.

The six students, who were arrested after some of the threats were reported to police, told investigators they had agreed among themselves to kill four fellow students on Halloween night.

The Prairie Grove school system has about 1,300 students and serves a mostly rural community in the western fringe of the Ozark Mountains. The district is 200 miles west of Jonesboro, where four students and a teacher were killed in a campus shooting two years ago.

Last year, two students in Littleton, Colo., killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide inside Columbine High School.

Other notable campus shootings have occurred in Pennsylvania, Oregon and Mississippi.