World | Tue Feb 16, 2016 10:21pm EST

Police find classmate gave gun to Arizona girls in murder-suicide

PHOENIX | BY DAVID SCHWARTZ

The handgun used in last week's apparent murder-suicide of two 15-year-old girls found shot dead at their suburban Phoenix high school was furnished by a fellow student at the request of one of the girls, police said on Tuesday.

Sergeant David Vidaure, a spokesman for the police department in Glendale, Arizona, said the girl had obtained the weapon from her classmate, a 15-year-old boy, on the eve of last Friday's fatal shooting after telling him "she needed it for protection".

The classmate obliged by providing the girl with "a family-owned handgun, from his home, without the permission or knowledge of his parents," Vidaure said in a statement.

Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among American youths aged 10 to 24, resulting in 4,600 lives lost each year, and firearms are the most common method for taking one's own life, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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