National Post (National Edition)
Student in custody after 10 killed in Texas high school shooting.
SANTA FE, TEXAS • Ten people were killed in a shooting Friday morning at a high school here in southeast Texas, and a student was taken into custody amid the carnage, authorities said. Police were also investigating explosive devices found at the school and away from the campus.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that in addition to the 10 people slain, another 10 people were injured in the rampage at Santa Fe High School, about 34 miles southeast of Houston.
Most of those killed in the school were students, said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who said the shooting occurred shortly before 8 a.m.
Gonzalez said one male student was taken into custody, and he said a second person — another student described as “a person of interest” — was being detained and questioned. Abbott said a third person who authorities believe may have “certain information” will be interviewed by police, although he did not elaborate on what this person might know or their relationship to the attacker.
The gunfire in Santa Fe was the latest eruption of gun violence to terrorize students and teachers alike. It came just three months after a gunman in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 students and staff members at a high school there.
Abbott called the shooting in Santa Fe “one of the most heinous attacks that we’ve ever seen in the history of Texas schools.”
The attacker was wielding two guns — a shotgun and a .38 revolver — both of which were owned by his father, according to Abbott. He said it was unclear if the gunman’s father knew his son had taken the weapons.
“It’s impossible to describe the magnitude of the evil of someone who would attack innocent children in a school,” said Abbott.
The suspected shooter has been identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, according to law enforcement officials, who asked not to be identified discussing the ongoing investigation. These officials added that some of the explosives were found at his family home.
Abbott said that the shooter, who was being held by the Santa Fe police, had journals documenting his thoughts on both his computer and his cellphone. The shooter said “not only did he want to commit the shooting, but he wanted to commit suicide after,” Abbott said.
Instead, he said, the attacker gave himself up.
Isabelle Laymance, a 15-year-old who said she was inside one of the classes where the shooting took place, said the attacker shot an officer when police began to speak to the shooter. The attacker also kept saying he would surrender if they talked to him, Laymance said.
“He kept saying if I come out, don’t shoot me,” she said. “They didn’t shoot him they just put him in handcuffs.”
Abbott said that unlike previous mass shootings in Sutherland Springs and Parkland — which occurred after the attackers had repeated encounters with law enforcement and red flags — the Santa Fe attacker did not appear to leave behind the usual warning signs.
The suspected shooter had posted to Facebook a photo of a T-shirt with the words “Born to kill” written on it,” Abbott said, describing it as perhaps the most significant red flag.
“His slate is pretty clean,” Abbott said. “There simply were not the same kind of warning signs that we’ve seen in so many of the other shootings.”
Local authorities in Galveston County urged people in the community to be wary of potentially suspicious devices due to the explosives that had been found.
“There have been explosive devices found in the high school and surrounding areas adjacent to the high school,” Walter Braun, chief of the Santa Fe Independent School District Police Department, said.
Among the injured was one of Braun’s police officers. Joseph Gamaldi, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said that officer was shot and then flown to a hospital on a helicopter. Gamaldi said he did not have information on the condition of that officer, who had retired from the Houston police force.
Witnesses described panic and confusion at the school as the shots were fired. Students in an art room fled as a gunman came inside, and someone pulled a fire alarm.
Laymance, the 15-year-old student, was in one of the art classrooms where the shooting took place. About 20 people were in the class when “out of nowhere we heard multiple gunshots, so we all just got up and ran,” she said.
The back door was locked, Laymance said, so she ran into the supply closet connecting the two art classes. She was among eight students seeking safety behind a locked door.
“He was shooting people who were running out of the classroom,” she said.
Then the shooter began to fire inside the closet.
“He said ‘Surprise’ and then he started shooting and he killed one or two people,” she said.
Laymance said the attacker continued firing into the closet, pumping bullet after bullet inside, hitting one person in the head and another in the leg.
Eventually, she said, they fled the supply closet into the other art classroom “because that’s where the police were.”