Texas gov bails on gun giveaway
TEXAS GOV. Greg Abbott has turned gun-shy about his free shotgun raffle in the aftermath of the Santa Fe High School shooting.
The pro-gun Republican quietly scrubbed the “Win a Texasmade shotgun!” graphic from the contest form on his reelection campaign website and switched out the prize following Friday’s deadly massacre, the Daily News has learned.
The campaign initially touted the giveaway with an online photo of Abbott aiming a shotgun, but the site was updated to show a blank entry form — and the award is now good for a generic gift card, the campaign told The News.
“It’s going to be a $250 gift certificate, in the form of a Visa gift card . . . to anywhere,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said.
“We made the decision to change it over the weekend,” he said. “It’s important to note this contest has been going on since well before Friday. Obviously, we changed it because of the events on Friday.”
Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, is accused of walking into Santa Fe High School south of Houston on Friday and opening fire with a .38-caliber revolver and a shotgun. Ten people died.
Before the attack, Abbott advertised the shotgun raffle on campaign materials and his reelection website. A TEEN GUNMAN accused of killing 10 students and teachers at a Texas high school gloated “another one bites the dust” each time he killed someone, a survivor said Monday.
Dimitrios Pagourtzis taunted his victims as he made his way through Santa Fe High School on Friday with a .38-caliber handgun and a shotgun, one witness said.
“He was playing music, making jokes while he was doing it,” Trenton Beazley recalled on ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”
“Every time he would kill someone he would say, ‘Another one bites the dust.’ ”
One victim was hailed Monday as a hero who saved several lives.
Christian Garcia — who had wanted to join the Army — used his body to barricade a door and prevent the shooter from barging into a room, said witnesses.
By doing so, Garcia, 15, allowed his classmates to escape the rampage via a back corridor, his family’s pastor, Keenan Smith, told KHOU.
Garcia was mortally wounded when the gunman shot through the door, striking him and others.
Smith recalled baptizing the teen in 2013 and watched him grow in the church. Garcia and his family recently moved to Santa Fe from Crosby, Texas, so they could build a new home.
Among those killed was Shana Fisher, 16, who rebuffed Pagourtzis’ advances, her grieving parents said.
Shana warned her mom two weeks ago that Pagourtzis was going to kill her, dad Timothy Thomas told the Daily Mail.
Pagourtzis “had told her himself he was going to kill her. He was walking around planning this in his head for two weeks,” Thomas said.
“Shana said that if he came into the school with a gun and killed her she would haunt him for the rest of his life. She was really scared.”
Investigators were still trying Monday to pinpoint why a trenchcoat-wearing Pagourtzis unleashed lethal mayhem at the school.
Santa Fe sophomore Rome Shubert didn’t realize a bullet went through the back of his head until he had run almost 300 feet from the scene.
“I looked down and noticed a little blood on my shirt,” he told “GMA.” At first he believed “it was somebody else’s, and somebody told me I had been shot in the back of the head.”
“The bullet went through the back of my head and through the side of my head,” he said. “If it had been anywhere else, upside-down or diagonal, I could have been paralyzed or killed.”
Miraculously, the teen was well enough to make his baseball game the next day. A pitcher committed to the University of Houston, he said he played Saturday with the victims’ initials on his wrist to “give a little feeling of hope.”
Rome Shubert’s mother, Sheri, told “GMA” on Monday that she expected her son’s suburban Houston school would eventually fall victim to a shooter.
“I felt like it’s a pattern with these shootings, and nothing has changed after each one of them,” she said. “We debate gun control, then we’re numb and it goes away. And then there’s another shooting.”