Texas shooter described as non-emotional

THE 17-year-old pupil charged with killing 10 people when he opened fire in an art class at his Houston-area high school appeared “weirdly non-emotional” on the morning after the rampage, one of his lawyers said on Saturday.

The teenager, identified by police as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, has been charged with murder and is being held without bail in Santa Fe, Texas, where authorities said he went on a shooting spree shortly before 8am on Friday.

In addition to 10 fatalities, the gunman wounded at least 13 people, with two of them in critical condition.

One of those was one of the 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, said he had spent an hour with Pagourtzis on Friday night and Saturday morning.

“He’s very emotional and weirdly non-emotional,” the attorney said.

“There are aspects of it he understands and there are aspects he doesn’t understand.”

As the shooting unfolded, Pagourtzis spared people he liked so he could have his side of the story told, a charge sheet showed.

The mother of one of the victims told the Los Angeles Times that her daughter, Shana Fisher, 16, had rejected four months of advances from Pagourtzis.

Fisher finally stood up to him and embarrassed him in class, the newspaper quoted her mother, Sadie Rodriguez, as saying.

“A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like, Shana being the first one.” – Reuters