RIVER RIDGE, La. —  A male student shot himself outside the gym at a private school in suburban New Orleans on Monday morning.

"All I can tell you is we have a student who has an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Col. John Fortunato, a sheriff's department spokesman, said. He said the student was taken to hospital and that the student's parents were at the hospital.

He did not have further details.

Bob Eutsler, spokesman for John Curtis Christian School in River Ridge, said the incident was a single case of attempted suicide involving a male student and that no other child was injured. Eutsler stressed that no other students were in danger.