No answers for families
Relatives are desperate for details
SANTA FE, Texas – Rhonda Hart knows her daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, died quickly when a spray of shotgun pellets and pistol bullets tore through her stomach and inner organs.
But there’s a lot she doesn’t know about last year’s shooting at Santa Fe High School: How did the shooter enter the school? What time? Were there any red flags about the suspect? Why was he allowed to wear a trench coat to school?
“It’s been really frustrating,” Hart said. “They’ve kept us in the dark.”
A year after the attack May 18, 2018, that claimed 10 lives and injured 13 at Santa Fe High, Hart and other relatives of victims and survivors said they still don’t have many details. The families call for an independent, third-party review of the shooting to learn what went wrong
“You lay in bed and you think about, ‘What were her last moments? What really happened to her?’ The answers are out there. All they got to do is let me see them.” Steve Perkins, whose wife was fatally shot
and how to prevent shootings – in Santa Fe and elsewhere.
After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year in Parkland, Florida, authorities quickly released a timeline of the attack, formed a commission and produced a detailed analysis of the incident. Some Santa Fe parents said Texas officials, citing the investigation and upcoming trial, withhold important details.
Shortly after the shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott convened roundtable discussions with experts and parents and released a 40-point action plan. State lawmakers passed many of those recommendations into law, including money for student risk assessment and mental health initiatives.
Families said more is needed. “Nobody is being held accountable,” said John Rosenboom, whose son Colby was shot in the hip and survived. “It’s a shame we know more about the Parkland shooting than the shooting that happened right here in our own town.”
Authorities said Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a junior at the high school, opened fire in two crowded art classrooms, using his family’s sawed-off Remington shotgun and a .38 handgun. Students hid in supply closets and scrambled under desks as the suspect repeatedly shot at and taunted his classmates before surrendering to police, according to court documents and witnesses. He was charged with capital murder and aggravated assault on a peace officer.
Glenda Ann Perkins, 64, a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High, was shot and killed leading a group of students out an exit. Her husband, Steve, said he has received little detail about the shooting, despite repeated trips to the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office and meetings with police officials and federal prosecutors.
He said he’d like to know the exact timeline of events, how many times his wife was shot and how long she may have lived after being shot – details authorities refused to share.
“You lay in bed and you think about, ‘What were her last moments? What really happened to her?’ ” he said. “The answers are out there. All they got to do is let me see them.”
Steve Perkins said he walked around in a fog of crippling mental pain after the shooting. Slowly, he has processed the loss but thinks about and misses his wife each day, he said.
Getting more details about her final moments would bring much-needed closure to the event, he said.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to have to answer.”
Like others, Perkins voiced frustration that authorities in Florida have been much more open with details about the Parkland shooting than Texan officials have.
Three weeks after the attack Feb. 14, 2018, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office released a detailed timeline of the
“It’s a shame we know more about the Parkland shooting than the shooting that happened right here in our own town.” John Rosenboom, whose son Colby was wounded
event, and several officials, including Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, were fired for mishandling the shooting and its aftermath. Florida lawmakers created a commission that included parents of victims and produced a 439page report dissecting the shooting.
The report used surveillance video, police body-worn cameras, cellphone videos, police reports and witness testimony to stitch together a minute-byminute account of the shooting, highlighting where things went wrong and suggesting improvements. Last month, some of those recommendations, including enhancing mental health services for students and improving threat assessments at schools, were signed into law.
Key to the changes was having an independent commission with the power to subpoena people and records, said Florida Sen. Bill Galvano, who wrote the bill that led to the commission.
“It brought the discussion to a new transparent level,” he said. “We had to hear and understand what went wrong and what didn’t.”
The Santa Fe Independent School District has implemented changes, such as metal detectors at all its schools and changes in locks and alarm systems.
J.R. “Rusty” Norman, president of the Santa Fe School Board, said the board is waiting to see what the criminal investigation unearths before taking further steps. The Texas School Safety Center, a research center at Texas State University in San Marcos, is conducting a district-wide evaluation of policies and procedures but not looking specifically at the shooting, Norman said.
Results of that study may not be made public, he said. “You’re talking safety and security measures,” Norman said. “We’re not going to expose flaws to someone who can be a potential perpetrator down the road.”
Jack Roady, Galveston County’s district attorney, said he sympathizes with parents, but an exception to the Texas Public Information Act, known as the “law enforcement” exception, allows prosecutors and other officials to withhold information if its release could jeopardize an investigation or trial.
Releasing details of the shooting could taint the testimony of witnesses and compromise a fair trial for the defendant, he said. Roady said he plans to lobby Texas lawmakers in the coming months to tweak the law, so he can share information with families of victims and survivors without having to release it to the public.
“It’s heartbreaking that we have to tell them, ‘Not yet,’ ” he said. “I wish we could share that information. We’re just not able to at this point.”
Some families questioned whether the suspect had any disciplinary marks on his record that might have alerted school officials to his state of mind. The Florida report on the Parkland shooting revealed that authorities missed multiple red flags with that shooter, including incidents with the Broward County Sheriff ’s Office and tips to the FBI that went unheeded.
Students said Pagourtzis wore a long jacket or trench coat to school in the months leading up to the shooting, which is against school code policy and should have alerted school officials.
Colby Rosenboom recovered quicker than other survivors, but mental scars lingered. In the first few months after the shooting, he’d get anxious in crowded places, such as the mall, said his father, John.
John and Dawn Rosenboom lobbied school officials for more information, including details on the suspect’s past. That information would bolster their confidence that the school is doing everything possible to prevent another shooting, Dawn Rosenboom said.
The lack of details added to their anxiety, she said. “It’s disheartening,” she said. “We’re probably the most uninformed group of parents on the planet as far as what happened.”
Hart said she sent several Freedom of Information Act requests, which were denied by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
Hart turned to Google and her dad, a former hunter who knew about gunshot wounds, to try to learn more. After a brief, informal phone chat with the Galveston County medical examiner, she scoured the internet and deduced that the close-range shotgun blast probably tore through Kimberly’s liver, spleen, heart and lungs, probably killing her quickly. She hasn’t seen her daughter’s autopsy report.
As a former bus driver for the Santa Fe ISD, Hart would routinely call in reports of troubled students, she said.
“Somebody at some point should have seen this kid wasn’t doing well,” Hart said. “Somebody missed a step with this kid, and I want to know why.”
Sonia Lopez, mother of shooting victim Sarah Salazar, said she understands prosecutors need to preserve the integrity of the trial. Sarah survived but underwent months of painful physical therapy to repair injuries to her shoulder and neck. Lopez said she is willing to wait until details come out at trial. “We trust God that he’s brought us this far and he’ll get us through it,” she said.
Independent investigators should be talking to witnesses while memories are still fresh, said Flo Rice, a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High. Rice was hit with several shotgun blasts from the shooter as she escorted students away from the incident. Glenda Ann Perkins died a few feet away from her.
Details of the shooting and an analysis of what might have gone wrong could help other schools better prepare for a mass shooter, she said. There have been at least three school mass shootings since the Santa Fe incident.
In December, Rice and other survivors met with Abbott at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin and urged him to create an independent commission to investigate the shooting. Abbott said he would make it a top priority, Rice said, but there’s been no sign of a review.
“We’re not protecting our children,” she said. “If you can’t learn from the past, it’s going to continue happening.”