Texas sees 30 minutes of terror

School shooter turned art class into war zone

SANTA FE, Texas – Students were just starting their day. It was first-period art class.

Then it became a war zone.

For 30 minutes, authorities say Santa Fe High School was under siege by a teenager armed with a shotgun and .38-caliber revolver. In the end, 10 were killed and 13 others wounded.

Dimitrios Pagourtzis carried out Friday’s deadly rampage entirely within the art complex at the high school, barricading himself inside from the fusillade of police officers’ bullets that followed him there, Galveston County Judge Mark Henry said.

Law enforcement got the first calls at 7:32 a.m., according to an affidavit filed in Galveston County court Friday evening. It wasn’t until 30 minutes later that Pagourtzis surrendered and admitted to targeting students he didn’t like inside the school, authorities said.

The art complex is made up of four rooms, interconnected by interior hallways. Pagourtzis walked into the area Friday morning and began shooting students and teachers, said Henry, the county’s top administrator.

All of the injuries and deaths occurred within the art complex, he said. Henry said he didn’t know how many total students were in that part of the school when the shooting began.

“It’s tragic,” Henry said. “I don’t know how you make any sense of this.”

Zachary Muehe, a sophomore at the school of roughly 1,400 students, was in one of the rooms in the art complex when he heard three loud booms.

Muehe told The New York Times he recognized Pagourtzis from the school’s football team — then he realized he was holding a shotgun.

“It was crazy watching him shoot and then pump. I remember seeing the shrapnel from the tables, whatever he hit. I remember seeing the shrapnel go past my face,” he told the Times.

As he ran from the classroom, Muehe told the newspaper, he looked back and saw students lying on the ground.

“There was a girl on the ground, and he shot her in the head one or two times,” he said.

The first one to confront Pagourtzis was one of the school’s police officers, John Barnes, who tried to enter the art complex looking for the shooter, Henry said.

But Pagourtzis appeared to be ready for Barnes and fired at him, hitting him in the upper arm, Henry said. Barnes was in stable but critical condition Saturday afternoon.

As the shooting unfolded in the art complex, students and teachers in other parts of the school braced for the shooter or fled the scene.

Kaylee Haaga, 17, was just settling into Steve Rose’s first-period economics class when a person in the hall outside told Rose someone had a shotgun in the school.

The teacher immediately closed the door, ordered all the students to hide under their desks and crouched next to the door, waiting to jump on the shooter if he came in, Haaga said.

“It’s my life before y’all’s,” he told the class.

Haaga hid under Rose’s desk and pulled a chair over the opening. She texted her mom and dad and frantically tried to reach her little sister, Shelby, 15, a freshman at the school.

After a while, she put her phone away. “I already told the people I love that I loved them,” she said.

After what seemed like an hour, police officers entered her class and told the students to move out. The halls were filled with officers in tactical gear armed with long guns, searching classrooms and closets. One of the officers instructed Haaga and her classmates to go out to the front of the school, rather than the back, she said.

“He told me if you hear any shots, run as fast as you can,” Haaga said. “Soon as you get out those doors, take your shoes off, run to the other side and don’t look back.” She did just that.

Inside the art complex, Pagourtzis roamed from room to room, taunting students and shooting at them as they scrambled behind desks.

When a group of students hid in a supply closet, the shooter yelled “Surprise!” and an expletive and opened fire, killing two of the eight students hiding inside, according to a Facebook post by Deedra Van Ness, whose daughter, Isabelle, survived.

“She and her friends had been in the same room with the gunman the ENTIRE TIME,” Van Ness wrote.