Rejection by girl could be the motive

The mother of one of the 10 people killed at a Texas high school said her daughter recently rejected the romantic advances of the 17-yearold charged in the shootings, a possible motive for the violent tragedy.

Sadie Rodriguez said her daughter, Shana Fisher, had made clear that she was not interested in Dimitrios Pagourtzis.

“He continued to get more aggressive,” Rodriguez told The Associated Press in an interview conducted Saturday via Facebook. “She finally stood up to him and embarrassed him.”

The incident took place one week before the shooting, Rodriguez said. Police have not yet said what might have motivated the attack.

Asked about Rodriguez’s allegation, a lawyer for the Pagourtzis’s family said he hadn’t heard about any such interaction between Pagourtzis and any of the victims and therefore couldn’t comment.

School had an active-shooter plan that failed

The school district had an active-shooter plan, and two armed police officers walked the halls of the high school. School district leaders had even agreed last fall to eventually arm teachers and staff under the state’s school marshal programme, one of the country’s most aggressive and controversial policies intended to get more guns into classrooms.

They thought they were a hardened target, part of what’s expected today of the American public high school in an age when school shootings occur with alarming frequency. And so a death toll of 10 was a tragic sign of failure and needing to do more, but also a sign, to some, that it could have been much worse.

“My first indication is that our policies and procedures worked,” J.R. “Rusty” Norman, president of the school district’s board of trustees, said Saturday, standing exhausted at his front door. “Having said that, the way things are, if someone wants to get into a school to create havoc, they can do it.”