‘Spurned advances provoked attack’
Texas shooter said to have opened fire on those he didn’t like week after class humiliation
SANTA FE, Texas: A teenaged boy who shot and killed eight students and two teachers in Texas had been spurned by one of his victims after making aggressive advances, her mother told the Los Angeles Times.
Sadie Rodriguez, the mother of Shana Fisher, 16, told the newspaper that her daughter rejected four months of aggressive advances from accused shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, at the Santa Fe high school.
Fisher finally stood up to him and embarrassed him in class, the newspaper quoted her mother as writing in a private message to the Times.
“A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like,” she said. “Shana being the first one.”
Rodriguez could not independently be reached for comment.
If true, it would be the second school shooting in recent months driven by such rejection.
In March, a 17-year-old Maryland high school student used his father’s gun to shoot and seriously wound a female student with whom he had been in a recently ended relationship, police said.
As the investigation enters its third day on Sunday, no official motive has been announced for the massacre, the fourth-deadliest mass shooting at a US public school in modern history.
Classmates at Santa Fe High School, with some 1,460 students, described the accused shooter, as a quiet loner, who played on the school’s football team.
He wore a black trench coat to school in the Texas heat on Friday and opened fire with a pistol and shotgun.
Multiple news accounts depicted him as taunting his victims as he fired, focusing mostly on the arts class room where Fisher was.
In addition to 10 fatalities, the gunman wounded at least 13 people, with two of them in critical condition.
One of those in critical condition was one of the two school resource officers who engaged the shooter before his surrender.
Nicholas Poehl, one of two lawyers hired by the suspect’s parents to represent him, told Reuters he had spent a total of one hour with Pagourtzis on Friday night and Saturday morning.
“He’s very emotional and weirdly nonemotional,” the attorney said when asked to describe his client’s state of mind.
“There are aspects of it he understands and there are aspects he doesn’t understand.”
Texas’ governor, Jim Abbott, a Republican, told reporters that Pagourtzis obtained firearms from his father, who had likely acquired them legally.
Abbott also said Pagourtzis wanted to commit suicide, citing the suspect’s journals, but did not have the courage to do so.
Pagourtzis’ family said in a statement they were “saddened and dismayed” by the shooting and “as shocked as anyone else” by the events.
They said they are cooperating with authorities.
All schools in Santa Fe will be closed Monday and Tuesday, officials said.
Pagourtzis, who police said has confessed to the shooting, was being held without bond Sunday at a jail in Galveston.
Investigators had seen a photo of a T-shirt that read “Born to Kill” on the suspect’s Facebook page and authorities were examining his journal, Texas Governor Greg Abbott told reporters, but there were no outward signs he had been planning an attack.
Pagourtzis waived his right to remain silent and made a statement to authorities admitting to the shooting, according to an affidavit ahead of his arrest.
Santa Fe High School, southeast of Houston, became the scene of the fourth-deadliest mass shooting at a US public school in modern history, joining a long list of campuses where students and faculty have fallen victim to gunfire.
The Texas rampage again stoked the country’s long-running debate over gun ownership, three months after a student-led gun control movement emerged from a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 teens and educators dead.
Students and faculty, bussed on to campus in small groups, were allowed to enter the high school on Saturday to retrieve belongings, though investigators closed off part of the grounds. Police kept reporters about 91 metres away.
All schools in the Santa Fe school district will remain closed on Monday and Tuesday, officials said.
In a letter to parents dated Friday but posted on the district’s website on Saturday, Superintendent Leigh Wall said eight of the dead were students and two were teachers. Authorities had earlier said that nine students and one teacher were killed.
National Football League star J.J. Watt, who plays defensive end for the Houston Texans, said he will pay for the funerals of the deceased, local media reported.
“Absolutely horrific,” he tweeted about the shooting.
Some aspects of the shooting had echoes of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. The two teenaged killers in that incident wore trench coats, used shotguns and planted improvised explosives, killing 10 before committing suicide themselves.
It was the second mass shooting in Texas in less than seven months. A man armed with an assault rifle shot dead 26 people during Sunday prayers at a rural church last November. — Reuters
He’s very emotional and weirdly nonemotional. Nicholas Poehl, one of two lawyers hired by Dimitrios’ parents