A 17-year-old student armed with a shotgun and pistol opened fire at his Texas high school on Friday, 18 May, killing nine students and a teacher, authorities said, in an attack with eerie echoes of the massacre at a Florida high school in February.
Students said the gunman, identified by law enforcement as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, opened fire in an art class at Santa Fe High School shortly before 8 am Central Time. Students and staff fled after seeing classmates wounded and a fire alarm triggered a full evacuation.
Texas governor Greg Abbott said the suspect was armed with a shotgun and a .38 caliber revolver. Both belonged to the suspect's father, Reuters reported.
“Not only did he want to commit the shooting, but he wanted to commit suicide after the shooting,” Abbott told reporters, citing a police review of the suspect’s journals. “He didn’t have the courage to commit suicide.”
Classmates described Pagourtzis as a quiet loner who played on the football team. On Friday, they said, he wore a trench coat to school in Santa Fe, located about 30 miles (50 km) southeast of Houston, on a day when temperatures topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
The incident was the latest in a long series of deadly shootings at US schools. Seventeen teens and educators were shot dead at a Parkland, Florida, high school in February, a massacre that stirred the nation's long-running debate over gun ownership.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said that 10 people, both students and adults, died in the incident at the school about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Houston.
Explosive devices had also been found at the school and off campus, Gonzalez tweeted. “Law enforcement is in the process of rendering them safe. School has been evacuated.”
At least ten people were taken to area hospitals for treatment, hospital officials said. The conditions of those people was not immediately clear. Gonzalez said a police officer was also being treated for injuries.
Sophomore Leila Butler told the local ABC affiliate that fire alarms went off at about 7:45 am local time (1245 GMT) and students left their classrooms. She said some students believe they heard shots fired, and that she was sheltering with other students and teachers near campus.
“We All Took off”
A male student, who did not identify himself, described fleeing the scene in an interview with CBS affiliate KHOU.
"Three shots that I heard, so we all took off in the back and I tried to get into the trees, I didn't want to be in sight. I heard four more shots, and then we jumped the fence to somebody's house," the student said.
Another sophomore, Dakota Shrader, told Fox 26 TV her 17-year-old girlfriend told her by phone that she was wounded but was recovering in a hospital. "My friend got injured," said an emotional Shrader. "Her leg, she got shot in the leg."
Dr David Marshall, Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said that the hospital was treating at least three patients - two adults and one person under 18. He said it was not immediately clear if that child was a student.
US President Donald Trump called the latest school shooting, “heartbreaking.”
My administration is determined to do everything in our power to protect our students, secure our schools and to keep weapons out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves and to othersDonald Trump, President, United States
Days after the Parkland shooting, Trump said that elected officials should be ready to "fight" the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group. Early this month he embraced that group, telling its annual meeting in Dallas "your Second Amendment rights are under siege."
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution gives US Citizens the right to bear arms.
No major federal gun controls have been imposed since Parkland, though the administration is pursuing a proposed regulatory ban on "bump stocks," which enable a semi-automatic rifle to fire a steady stream of bullets. The devices were used in an October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 people but have not played a role in other major U.S. mass shootings.
(With inputs from Reuters and AP)
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