DALTON, Ga. — Shots were fired at a north Georgia high school Wednesday morning and a teacher is in custody. No students were injured by gun fire.

Police identified the teacher as Randal Davidson. 

The Dalton High School social studies teacher fired at least one shot that led to the evacuation of the school, according to a Dalton Police Department spokesman. The weapon used was described as .38-caliber snub-nosed revolver that Davidson had brought to school in a computer case.

Davidson, 53, has been a longtime radio play-by-play announcer for Dalton High sports, most notably calling Friday night football games on 104.5 FM. Davidson has authored two books on the history of Dalton High football. 

Police gave a sequence of events at a briefing Wednesday afternoon. They said Davidson locked his classroom door during his planning period. When the school principal tried to enter the room, police said the teacher shot through an open window but the bullet did not strike anyone. 

Davidson surrendered himself to authorities after about 45 minutes and was unharmed. 

Davidson was charged with aggravated assault, carrying a weapon on school grounds, terroristic threats, reckless conduct, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and disrupting a public school. He is being held in the Whitfield County jail without bond.

Davidson appears to have no criminal record but police had previous encounters with him. In a 2016 incident, authorities said he exhibited strange behavior and told officers he had a woman killed, but police said he appeared delusional. At the time he said he was on several medications and suffered from depression. No charges were filed. In January of last year, he went missing for a few hours and appeared confused when he was located. 

Steve Bartoo, the school principal, described Davidson as an “Excellent teacher. Very good teacher. Well thought of in our school. He is a good teacher. I would be surprised if it were any of our teachers, not just him. Our teachers care about our kids, love our kids, take care of our kids. It would be shocking to any principal if one of their teachers pulled a gun out in a classroom and shot it.”

One student described the scene as “crazy,” saying students were running panicked through the school. A student injured an ankle running to safety and was treated by first responders, according to authorities. 

“We heard Code Red, and the way Principal Bartoo said it, you could tell he was scared,” said junior Wesley Caceres, who posted a Snapchat video of students sprinting through the halls.

The school building was placed on lockdown and students were then evacuated to the Dalton Convention Center. An alert was sent to parents with instructions to pick up their children at the convention center, police said. 

The incident occurred as the nation debates the merits of President Donald Trump’s proposal to arm educators. Three teachers were among the 17 people killed in the recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla. 

“We don’t know if the teacher dropped the gun, threatened anyone, shot themself or whatever,” State Rep. Steve Tarvin, R-Chickamauga (Georgia) said shortly after word of the shooting started to spread at the state Capitol in Atlanta. 

Georgia has allowed local school boards to decide whether to arm teachers and staff since lawmakers passed the so-called “Guns Everywhere” bill in 2014.

It does not appear that any school systems have decided to go that route, although a handful of districts have started discussing it since the recent Florida shooting.

“The issue of teachers carrying weapons inside the school is a matter that is up to the local school board,” Tarvin said. “You have to realize those teachers would be highly trained, just a like a policeman would.”

Dalton High School had an increased police presence in recent days after the discovery of a threatening note surfaced two weeks ago. The threat resulted in increased patrols at all city schools and a drop in attendance last week after Dalton Public Schools posted a video from Dalton High Principal Steve Bartoo to social media informing students and parents of the threat.

Wednesday afternoon Georgia’s governor, Nathan Deal, said “Even though – thankfully – apparently no students were in danger, it’s always disturbing when anything like that happens within the context of a school.”