The school shooting at Sante Fe High School south of Houston, Texas on Friday resulted in the death of nine students and one teacher while injuring 10 others.
Students who survived the shooting offered recounted the tragedy to multiple news outlets, including CBS News.
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Michael Farina, 17, told the outlet he was on the other side of campus when the firing took place, and believed it was a fire drill as the alarm had been pulled. He said a principal came running down the hall instructing everyone to run, while a teacher yelled out, “It is real.”
He said some students ran to takecover behind a car shop across the street from the school.
Damon Rabon, a student, said he was one classroom away from where the shooting took place during the school day’s first period. He said he and the other students heard “this loud banging, kind of a ringing noise.”
The substitute teacher in the room at the time peaked out from the classroom door and spotted the alleged shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis, describing him as a short male wearing a black trench coat and backpack while holding a sawed-off shotgun. The students remained inside the room and barricaded the door.
Rabon said the teacher then pulled the fire alarm hoping the students would evacuate the building.
“It was just so scary, you could hear him walking, you’d hear him walking right past our classroom,” Rabon said. “You could hear the shots, ‘boom, boom, boom.’ Thank God he didn’t come into our classroom.”
Another student, Dakota Shrader, struggled to hold back tears as she spoke to CBS News.
“As soon as we heard the alarms, everybody just started leaving following the same procedure as [a] practice fire drill,’ Shrader said. “And next thing you know, we just hear three gunshots, loud explosions, and all the teachers are telling us to run. You could just hear ‘boom, boom, boom’ so I just ran as fast as I could to the nearest forest to hide and call my mom.”
A senior student going by Tyler said he was in the school and saw the gunman walking down the hallway. He ran outside with the other students once the fire alarm was pulled, and said he heard three shots, then another four before making it to the treeline, hopping a fence and getting to safety.
Another student, Zach Lawford, said he heard as many as 20 shots.
Pagortzis was arrested and charged with capital murder with no bail and is being held in the Galveston County Jail.
