The confessed gunman who opened fire inside Santa Fe High School in Texas Friday morning allegedly repeated “another one bites the dust” as he shot and killed 10 people, one survivor said Monday.
“He was playing music, making jokes, had slogans and rhymes he kept saying,” student Trenton Beazely said of the suspect on Good Morning America. “Every time he’d kill someone he’d say, ‘another one bites the dust.’”
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Eight students and two teachers were shot and killed when 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis allegedly opened fire in an art classroom with a shotgun and .38-caliber revolver, both of which are reportedly legally owned by his father. Thirteen others were wounded.
Beazely said while in art class that morning, he first heard a “boom” that he assumed was a textbook falling to the floor. Then he heard two more “booms,” after which “everyone just started taking off running,” he said.
Beazley broke into a storage room where the school stored kilns, but Pagourtzis found them. “I could see him running, gun pointed at the door,” he said.
Beazley said he helped wrap wounds for a victim as his adrenaline raced — and that it wasn’t until after police responded to the emergency that he realized he had been shot.
Another student, Rome Shubert, told GMA that he scaled a seven-foot wall during the shooting before realizing he had been shot in the head. The bullet went through the back of his head and out the side, he said, adding that doctors told him had the wound been anywhere else he could have been paralyzed or killed.
Beazley said he never expected Friday’s tragedy to happen at his school.
“You see it on the news happen at others schools, and it’s sad until you actually end up experiencing it,” he said.
Pagourtzis is in custody and has been charged with capital murder, officials said.
The suspect allegedly wrote in journals that he wanted to carry out the shooting and then commit suicide, but he gave himself up to authorities, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who called the shooting “one of the most heinous attacks that we’ve ever seen in the history of Texas schools.”
Students said that Pagourtzis may have been bullied by teachers as well as classmates. According to a report by Fox 26 Houston, some believe that their teachers were as much a target as any of the kids themselves were. Dustin Severin, a high school junior, told the outlet that coaches had a part in “emotionally bullying” Pagourtzis.
“I know he’s picked on by coaches and other students. He didn’t really talk to anyone. Nothing like physical but they still emotionally bullied him,” Dustin said.
Pagourtzis’ attorney, Nicholas Poehl, agrees with that assessment. He told ABC 12 that “it appears” there was “teacher-on-student” bullying in Pagourtzis’ case. He claims to have obtained reports of the Santa Fe High football coaches harassing his young client.
The school district has denied these claims.
Pagourtzis’ family issued a short statement on Saturday. They are reportedly shocked and confused by their boy’s actions, describing him as a “smart, quiet, sweet boy.”
“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,” they said. They also offered their condolences to the victims and their families. They are cooperating completely with the investigators.
