The World Was Struck Again by Another School Shooting
On a Bound Texan Morning, a Audio Heard Besides Often at Schools Across America: Bang. Bang. Bang.
SANTA Atomic number 26, Tex. — Merely outside the ceramics storeroom where Trenton Beazley huddled on the flooring, his classmates and substitute teacher from first-period art lay dead. A gunman stalked back and forth between two adjoining classrooms within Santa Iron High Schoolhouse, firing blast afterwards boom.
This was really happening. Once more. This fourth dimension, to them.
Mr. Beazley, 15, a catcher on the high school baseball team, had woken up on Friday morning excited about that evening's quarterfinal game against Kingwood Park. When Mr. Beazley slipped into art class, the substitute, Ann Perkins, had been telling another student to go get a tardy laissez passer. Everything about that muggy belatedly-spring morning seemed so routine.
And so, at near 7:xxx a.m., Mr. Beazley heard the sound that has become too routine in schools across America: Blindside. Blindside. Bang.
On Sabbatum, through their daze, grief and anger over a massacre that left ten people expressionless and 13 wounded, this cleaved, stunned community of 13,000 struggled to find any reason behind information technology all. The authorities have not announced whatever motive but said that Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a 17-year-former student at Santa Fe High, had confessed to the rampage and told investigators he had spared students he liked so that "he could have his story told."
Like millions of their peers, the students here grew upwardly in the shadow of schoolhouse shootings. They had done active-shooter drills since form school. A school resources officer, who was critically wounded on Friday, patrolled their sprawling red brick schoolhouse, which is an hour southeast of Houston.
In February, they had been spooked by a lockdown ordered later on someone reported a popular-popular-pop sound exterior. Devin Maier, 17, remembers not existence able to go back to class that Mon and Tuesday. "I was just scared," she said.
The school massacre that same month in Parkland, Fla., struck a response here, besides, every bit a minor group of students marched and waved signs that declared, "Never Over again."
Merely for many, the protests and preparations only hardened the shard of dread that occupied their thoughts — that 1 day, the boob tube scenes of tears and police tape, memorial flowers and hands-up fleeing children, would arrive for them. Their plough.
"In the dorsum of my mind, I knew it was going to happen," said Madilyn Williams, 18.
Other students would later say they thought they heard a garbage can slamming or metal being hammered, simply Mr. Beazley said he and his classmates knew nearly immediately what was happening.
They bolted for the storeroom where the pottery kilns were kept while Ms. Perkins went to shut the classroom door. She was one of the 2 teachers killed.
The last thing Mr. Beazley saw as they tried to slam the door was the gunman, clad in a black trench coat, heading toward the closet, a strap of shotgun shells slung across his chest.
"I realized then, wow, he'south non playing around," Mr. Beazley said.
The students tried badly to barricade the cupboard door with a heavy pottery kiln. He smashed his fists against a estrus vent to dislodge the kiln from the wall, but as he shoved information technology beyond the floor, the gunman jabbed his .38 pistol through a broken window of the cupboard door. Mr. Beazley heard a taunt that is now burned onto his memory: "Surprise," the gunman said, followed by an expletive. And then:
Bang.
He killed a educatee who lay most the door, and as Mr. Beazley pushed and pushed on the kiln, he aimed at Mr. Beazley.
Bang.
"He saw me," Mr. Beazley said. He was grazed in the side, and and so struck again by the bullet'southward ricochet. "I just dropped to the floor."
While students puzzled over the gunman's motives, the mother of Shana Fisher, a sixteen-twelvemonth-one-time who was among those killed, said on Sat that Mr. Pagourtzis had fabricated advances toward her daughter for 4 months, which she consistently turned down.
"He had been getting more aggressive, more aggressive," Ms. Fisher's female parent, Sadie Rodriguez, said. "Finally, she stood up to him, she stood upwards to him in form last calendar week."
Ms. Rodriguez said she did non discuss the events directly with her daughter. But she said that Ms. Fisher had told her sister and Ms. Rodriguez's brother of her bug with Mr. Pagourtzis, and of the virtually recent confrontation in grade.
Rome Shubert was in the first classroom to be attacked on Friday morning. He had been drawing 3-D shapes in art class when his teacher left to drop off something in another classroom. The gunman walked in through the open door "guns blazing," Mr. Shubert said.
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What the Texas Suspect's Pins Tell Us
Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the 17-year-old suspected of killing 10 people at a Texas high schoolhouse, wore wearing apparel that featured several symbolic pins. Hither's what they mean.
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This is the person that police say killed 10 people at a Texas high school. And this is his Facebook folio. Since the shooting, it'southward been taken down. Simply ane thing notable about the photos is the appearance of several symbols, some seeming to contradict others. Here's what we know nearly them. On his hat is this center pin. It's sold on numerous websites labeled as a bisexual pride pin. Adjacent, on the jacket. This hammer and sickle pivot with a red star is a common symbol of communism. Information technology was well-nigh notably on the Soviet flag. The suspect writes that to him, it symbolized rebellion. And, indeed, on some websites the pins are marketed as symbols of anarchy. On the reverse lapel is what looks to exist a Japanese flag. The doubtable plainly believed it symbolizes kamikaze tactics. Those were the tactics of Japanese pilots who intentionally crashed their planes into enemy ships during Earth War Ii. Hither is the German atomic number 26 cross, an honour for armed forces heroism, non issued since World State of war II. It'south now ofttimes used as a hate symbol by white supremacists but not exclusively. The suspect writes that the cross symbolizes bravery. This symbol is associated with a satanic idol. Pins with this symbol are often marketed every bit endorsed by the Church of Satan. The suspect writes that information technology symbolizes evil. The Cthulhu here is a creature that'south often found in science fiction and described as dead, but dreaming. There are several ways people interpret the Cthulhu, merely the suspect writes that to him, information technology symbolizes power. Finally, in full contradiction to the suspect's alleged actions, nosotros see him wearing the peace symbol.
"I hear boom. Three seconds later — boom. A couple seconds later, another blindside," he said. "My ears are ringing and I have no idea what'southward going on. His first shots were definitely in our room."
Mr. Shubert, a xvi-year-old pitcher on the baseball game team, dived under a tabular array, and flipped it onto its side for encompass. He said he saw Mr. Pagourtzis fire at one male student lying on the floor, but he seemed to miss the student on purpose.
"He shoots a couple anxiety to his left, and and then he shoots near him," Mr. Shubert said.
Mr. Shubert eventually ran out of the room and hopped a wall behind the schoolhouse. At that place, a friend told him what he had not realized until then: He had been shot. He was bleeding from the back of his head.
"The doctors told me if it would have been whatsoever up, any downward, whatsoever left or correct, that I could exist paralyzed for the rest of my life or killed," he said on Fri dark, a bandage poking from underneath his curly cherry pilus.
In a nearby agriculture class, Layton Kelly and his friends sprang to action every bit if they had been preparation for that awful moment. They heaped desks in front of the door, stacking them as high as they could. They close off the lights and huddled in the blackness, some praying, some crying, most of them trying fruitlessly to become a cell signal to reach their parents, as shot after shot echoed from just outside the door.
Mr. Kelly said he counted at least fifteen.
Dalton Stevens, sixteen, another pitcher on the varsity baseball team, stayed huddled in a small storage space inside the dance classroom, where he had been taking a stretching class for athletes. Ix male person students and their teacher hunkered down in a tiny closet, surrounded by the Native American-themed, green-and-gold costumes for the school's Tribal Belles dance team.
"The fire warning starts to become off considering someone pulled the burn down alarm," he said. "We keep on hearing shots. I'm shaking. I'm freaking out. I don't know what to practise. Everyone is frantic. I prayed a couple times."
The trip the light fantastic teacher in the room with them, Ashley Hardage, told the students to stay at-home, to stay tranquility.
So he took out his cellphone and texted his mother. At vii:46 a.one thousand., from inside the cupboard, Mr. Stevens wrote: "There's someone shooting in the school."
At vii:49 a.m., he wrote a second i: "I love y'all."
At 1 indicate, a human being who Mr. Stevens believed was the wounded schoolhouse resource officer, John Barnes, entered the dance classroom later on being shot in a confrontation with the gunman. Mr. Stevens desperately wanted to help the officeholder, but they did non open the closet door.
"I know I couldn't merely become out at that place, considering I know the shooter's in the art hallway," he said.
"It sounded like he was dying," Mr. Stevens said. "I hear him in the room and I hear him talking on the radio, and I hear his restricted breathing, in disturbing pain. We hear other police officers come in, give thanks God. They substitution gunfire in the hallway."
The gunman engaged the police in a fifteen-minute firefight that ended when he surrendered, abandoning what he said had been a plan to kill himself, said Galveston Canton Judge Marking Henry, the top local elected official.
After several minutes of silence, Mr. Stevens heard SWAT officers knock on the door and tell them the assailant was in custody, but the students still stayed tranquility in the closet and did not open up the door. They believed that the gunman could accept been tricking them into opening the door.
"We didn't say a word," he said. "They had knocked on the door and said it was the police, but with our protocol, nosotros're taught not to say annihilation until someone comes and unlocks the door and opens it."
By 8:06 a.k., he was out of the closet and his parents were rushing to the school. His mother texted him back: "On my fashion. I love u."
The students in the cupboard threaded their way out through hallways covered in blood.
"I've never been so scared in my life," Mr. Stevens said.
Grief washed over Santa Fe every bit parents and friends began to larn the names of the viii students and two teachers whose lives were cut short.
Cynthia Tisdale, a teacher, would not get to alive out her wish of retiring to spend more fourth dimension with her grandchildren. Christopher Stone, 17, would never again delight his friends with his dance moves and amuse. Sabika Sheikh, 17, a foreign exchange student, would never become to reunite with her parents in Pakistan. Shana Fisher, who but turned sixteen, would never come home to her beloved domestic dog, Kallie. And on and on.
The gunman's family also released a statement on Sat, saying information technology was "every bit shocked and confused equally anyone" and that the news media's descriptions of him and his actions seemed "incompatible with the boy we love." It said information technology was cooperating with the investigation.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/texas-santa-fe-school-shooting.html
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