Gunman opens fire in Texas high school, killing up to 10
SANTA FE, Tex. — Ten people were killed in a shooting Friday morning at a high school here in Southeast Texas by a student wielding two of his father’s guns, authorities said. Police were also investigating explosive devices found at the school and elsewhere in the community.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said that in addition to the 10 people slain, another 10 people were injured in the rampage at Santa Fe High School, about 34 miles southeast of Houston.
Most of those killed in the carnage were students, said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who said the shooting occurred shortly before 8 a.m.
The massacre came just three months after a gunman in Parkland, Fla., killed 17 students and staff members at a high school. The rampage in Santa Fe was the latest in the seemingly endless string of shootings at schools, churches, movie theaters, government offices, holiday parties, nightclubs and other places where people in America have been cut down by sudden, horrific spasms of gunfire and bloodshed.
Gonzalez said one male student was taken into custody, a 17-year-old officials have described as having an apparently clean slate before the massacre. Another student was being questioned, Gonzalez said, calling them “a person of interest.” Abbott said a third person who authorities believe may have “certain information” will be interviewed by police, although he did not elaborate on what this person might know or their relationship to the attacker.
Abbott called the shooting in Santa Fe “one of the most heinous attacks that we’ve ever seen in the history of Texas schools.”
The attacker was wielding two guns — a shotgun and a .38 revolver — both of which were owned by his father, according to Abbott. He said it was unclear if the gunman’s father knew his son had taken the weapons.
“It’s impossible to describe the magnitude of the evil of someone who would attack innocent children in a school,” said Abbott, who six months earlier had also decried “acts of evil” after a gunman killed more than two dozen people inside a Texas church.
The suspected shooter has been identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17. He has been charged with capital murder and aggravated assault of a peace officer and booked in the Galveston County jail on no bond, authorities said.
After the shooting, police and federal authorities could be seen blocking off an address linked to Pagourtzis’s mother and were going in and out of the home for hours.
Abbott said that the shooter, who was being held by the Santa Fe police, had journals documenting his thoughts on both his computer and his cellphone. The shooter said “not only did he want to commit the shooting, but he wanted to commit suicide after,” Abbott said.
Instead, he said, the attacker gave himself up to police, becoming a rare mass shooter taken into custody after.
Isabelle Laymance, a 15-year-old who said she was inside one of the classes where the shooting took place, said the attacker shot an officer when police began to speak to him. The attacker repeatedly told police he would surrender if they talked to him, Laymance said.
“He kept saying if I come out, don’t shoot me,” she said. “They didn’t shoot him, they just put him in handcuffs.”
Abbott said that unlike previous shooting rampages in Sutherland Springs and Parkland — both of which occurred after the attackers had repeated encounters with law enforcement and red flags — the Santa Fe attacker did not appear to leave behind the usual warning signs that precede mass shootings.
The suspected shooter had posted to Facebook a photo of a T-shirt with the words “Born to kill” written on it,” Abbott said, describing it as perhaps the most significant red flag that had been found so far.
“His slate is pretty clean,” Abbott said. “There simply were not the same kind of warning signs that we’ve seen in so many of the other shootings.”
Local authorities in Galveston County urged people in the community to be wary of potentially suspicious devices due to the explosives that had been found. Abbott said at least one explosive was a molotov cocktail, while others were found.
“There have been explosive devices found in the high school and surrounding areas adjacent to the high school,” Walter Braun, chief of the Santa Fe Independent School District Police Department, said in a news conference. District officials said law enforcement officers were “in the process of rendering them safe,” adding that the school had been evacuated.
Among the injured was one of Braun’s police officers, he said.
The chief medical officer at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Gulshan Sharma, told reporters that school police officer John Barnes was in critical condition with a gunshot wound and in danger of “bleeding out” when he arrived via helicopter transport. Doctors stabilized him, Sharma said, but he was still undergoing treatment Friday afternoon.
Witnesses described panic and confusion at the school as the shots were fired Friday morning. Students in an art room fled as a gunman came inside, and someone pulled a fire alarm.
Laymance, the 15-year-old student, was in one of the art classrooms where the shooting took place. About 20 people were in the class, and they were finishing their project drawing geometric shapes when “out of nowhere we heard multiple gunshots, so we all just got up and ran,” she said.
The back door was locked, Laymance said, so she ran into the supply closet connecting the two art classes. She was among eight students seeking shelter there, seeking safety behind a locked door.
“He was shooting people who were running out of the classroom,” she said.
Then the shooter began to fire inside the closet.
“He said ‘Surprise’ and then he started shooting and he killed one or two people,” she said.
Laymance said the attacker continued firing into the closet, pumping bullet after bullet inside, hitting one person in the head and another in the leg.
“I was laying down and I called the police and my mom,” she said. “I was just trying not to make noises. I was laying down on the ground and my friend was holding my hand and we were just trying to keep everyone quiet that was in there.”
Eventually, she said, they fled the supply closet into the other art classroom “because that’s where the police were.”
Other students said they initially thought the gunfire sounded like firecrackers or was a possible fire drill.
“The fire alarm was pulled, we went outside,” said Gage Slaughter, 17, who was in his AP history class when the shooting began. “When I heard the first gun shots, I didn’t know what it was.”
Then one of his coaches and some of the teachers told the kids to start running.
“I didn’t know what was going on until I was down the road a little ways and I heard one of the teachers saying it was a school shooter … I couldn’t believe that was actually happening,” Slaughter said in an interview.
Slaughter said the student identified as the shooter is a junior who he did not know well, although both of them played on the J.V. football team together. He described the suspected shooter as “a little weird, a little quiet.”
At least two of his football teammates had been shot, Slaughter said. One just got out of surgery, he said, “and the other, we don’t know anything about.”
The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston said it had received at least three patients wounded in the incident. Two were shot in their legs, including one younger than 18, and a third patient was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the upper arm.
Television footage showed students walking away from the main school building under the watch of law enforcement officers. Ambulances were on the scene, as well as Life Flight helicopters.
In the wake of the shooting, multiple questions remain unanswered about the gunman and how he carried out the attack. Leigh Wall, the school district’s superintendent, alluded to those in a letter she sent to the community.
“Like you, I have many questions about this horrific event,” Wall wrote. “Those answers will come in time as this methodical, thorough investigation moves forward. You have my word that you will remain informed and involved as we cope with this event together as a family.”
Parents were picking up their children early from other schools in the area as they reeled from the horror that had come to their community.
“I just need to cuddle [my] baby girl,” said Catharine Lindsey, a parent who lives nearby and said she could hear the rescue helicopters from her home. “Ever since Parkland I’ve had to tell my 13-year-old daughter to ‘not be a hero, to hide and stay safe with teacher’ if something like this happens, because she’s the type who would try and talk the shooter down.”
The shooting prompted a massive response from law enforcement. Harris County and Galveston County sheriff’s deputies were at the scene, along with the Texas Department of Public Safety and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Heavily armed officers in tactical gear were seen deploying at the school, an image that has become grimly familiar from shootings across the country.
The shooting was the 16th so far this year at a school during school hours, according to a Washington Post analysis, the highest number at this point in any year since 1999, the year of the Columbine High massacre. The Post’s analysis found that since 1999, shootings during school hours have killed at least 139 children, educators and other people; another 277 have also been injured.
Some students in Santa Fe said they were shocked at what had happened. Others said it seemed inevitable that this type of attack would eventually spread to their school.
“I was thinking it was going to happen eventually,” one student told the television station KPRC in Houston. “It’s been happening everywhere.”
[Here’s what Parkland survivors are saying about the Santa Fe school shooting]
President Trump decried the shooting Texas, vowing as he did after Parkland that his administration would work to protect students and secure schools.
“This has been going on too long in our country — too many years, too many decades now,” Trump said during remarks in Washington. “We grieve for the terrible loss of life and send our support and love to everyone affected by this absolutely horrific attack.”
Students who survived the Parkland massacre posted a message of support to those who endured the attack in Santa Fe, the type of violence they said would “continue to happen unless action is taken.”
Read this story at The Washington Post.
A woman prays in the grass outside the Alamo Gym where parents wait to reunite with their kids following a shooting at Santa Fe High School Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. (Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Santa Fe High School junior Guadalupe Sanchez, 16, cries in the arms of her mother, Elida Sanchez, after reuniting with her at a meeting point at a nearby Alamo Gym fitness center following a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, on Friday, May 18, 2018. (Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP)
This photo provided by the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office shows Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who law enforcement officials took into custody Friday, May 18, 2018, and identified as the suspect in the deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, near Houston. (Galveston County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Police officers in tactical gear move through the scene at Santa Fe High School after a shooting on Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. (Kevin M. Cox /The Galveston County Daily News via AP)
A Pearland Police armored vehicle stands ready in front of Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, in response to a shooting on Friday morning, May 18, 2018. (Kevin M. Cox/The Galveston County Daily News via AP)
In this image taken from video emergency personnel and law enforcement officers respond to a high school near Houston after an active shooter was reported on campus, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. The Santa Fe school district issued an alert Friday morning saying Santa Fe High School has been placed on lockdown. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)
A man hugs a woman outside the Alamo Gym where parents wait to reunite with their children following a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, on Friday, May 18, 2018. (Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP)
In this image taken from video law enforcement officers respond to a high school near Houston after an active shooter was reported on campus, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. The Santa Fe school district issued an alert Friday morning saying Santa Fe High School has been placed on lockdown. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)
In this image taken from video law enforcement officers respond to a high school near Houston after an active shooter was reported on campus, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. The Santa Fe school district issued an alert Friday morning saying Santa Fe High School has been placed on lockdown. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)
In this image taken from video law enforcement officers respond to a high school near Houston after an active shooter was reported on campus, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. The Santa Fe school district issued an alert Friday morning saying Santa Fe High School has been placed on lockdown. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)
In this image taken from video helicopters sit in the parking lot of Santa Fe High School as law enforcement officers respond to the school near Houston after an active shooter was reported on campus, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. The Santa Fe school district issued an alert Friday morning saying the high school has been placed on lockdown. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)
This image taken from video shows the campus of Santa Fe High School, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. Law enforcement officers responded to the school near Houston after an active shooter was reported on campus. The Santa Fe school district issued an alert Friday morning saying the high school has been placed on lockdown. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)
A Santa Fe Police officer consoles others after a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas on Friday, May 18, 2018. (Jennifer Reynolds /The Galveston County Daily News via AP)
Santa Fe High School staff react as they gather in the parking lot of a gas station following a shooting at the school in Santa Fe, Texas, on Friday, May 18, 2018. (Jennifer Reynolds/The Galveston County Daily News via AP)
A woman reacts while making a phone call outside the Alamo Gym where parents wait to reunite with their children following a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, on Friday, May 18, 2018. (Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Emergency Medical Service personnel walk in front of Santa Fe High School after a shooting on Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. (Kevin M. Cox /The Galveston County Daily News via AP)
People embrace outside the Alamo Gym where students and parents wait to reunite following a shooting at Santa Fe High School Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. ( Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Santa Fe High School freshman Caitlyn Girouard, center, hugs her friend outside the Alamo Gym where students and parents wait to reunite following a shooting at Santa Fe High School Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. (Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Law enforcement officers respond to an active shooter in front of Santa Fe High School Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. (Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Law enforcement officers respond to Santa Fe High School after an active shooter was reported on campus, Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. ( Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Santa Fe High School student Dakota Shrader is comforted by her mother Susan Davidson following a shooting at the school on Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas. Shrader said her friend was shot in the incident. (Stuart Villanueva/The Galveston County Daily News via AP)