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-year-old 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 said in an interview conducted on Saturday via Facebook. “She finally stood up to him and embarrassed him.”
Photo: AFP
The incident took place one week before the shooting, she said.
Police have not yet said what might have motivated the attack.
Asked about Rodriguez’s allegation, a lawyer for the Pagourtzis’ family said he had not heard about any such interaction between Pagourtzis and any of the victims and therefore could not comment.
“That’s news to me,” said lawyer Nicholas Poehl, though he cautioned that he had spent much of the day disputing false rumors about the teen’s personal life.
Earlier on Saturday, Poehl issued a statement from the family saying that they were “as shocked and confused as anyone else by these events that occurred” and asked for privacy.
“While we remain mostly in the dark about the specifics of yesterday’s tragedy, what we have learned from media reports seems incompatible with the boy we love,” the family’s statement said.
A junior at Santa Fe High, Pagourtzis hid a shotgun and a handgun under his trenchcoat before opening fire in a first-period art class on Friday, according to an affidavit filed by police.
The FBI on Saturday said that it had taken the lead in the joint investigation, at the request of local authorities.
“He gave a statement admitting to shooting multiple people inside the Santa Fe High School with the intent on killing people,” the police affidavit said. “Dimitrios advised he did not shoot students he did like so he could have his story told.”
The attack ended when Pagourtzis walked out of a classroom and surrendered to police.
Although Pagourtzis allegedly wrote about his intention to carry out the attack, authorities have not indicated a motive for the violence.
Santa Fe’s baseball team took the field on Saturday night after voting to play its scheduled regional quarter-final playoff as a show of strength and a means of catharsis in the face of tragedy.
Pitcher Rome Shubert, who was shot in the back of the head, but survived, and catcher Trent Beazley, who was grazed in his side, joined their team for the opening line-up. Neither played, but cheered their teammates from the dugout.
The Santa Fe Indians lost 7-0 to the Kingwood Park team.
Additional reporting by AFP
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS