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
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS