On 16th birthday, California student opens fire at his high school, killing two

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (Reuters) – A Southern California high school student pulled a .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun from his backpack and fired on fellow classmates on Thursday morning, killing two and wounding three others.

He saved the last bullet for himself. It was his 16th birthday.

The teenaged gunman, whose name was not provided by police, survived the self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and was in grave condition in hospital, law enforcement officials said.

“Video clearly shows the subject in the quad, withdraw a gun from his backpack, shoot and wound five people and then shoot himself,” Captain Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told reporters.

The two slain students were a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. Two other girls, aged 14 and 15, were wounded, as was a 14-year old boy, Wegener said.

Investigators said they did not yet know what could have driven the student to open fire at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, 40 miles (65 km) north of Los Angeles.

Police said the accused shooter had acted alone. Investigators descended on his family home, blocking off the street. They found no further danger there.

A next-door neighbor, registered nurse Jared Axen, said the suspect had seemed introverted, quiet and sad, possibly despondent over the loss of his father from a heart attack in December 2017.

‘HE WAS HURTING’

Axen, 33, said it was the boy who found his father deceased, not long after the older man had regained his sobriety and gotten his life “back on track” after years of struggling with alcohol abuse.

“I would say he (the boy) was hurting and couldn’t ask for help,” Axen said of the suspect, who was a track athlete at the school, was involved in Boy Scouts and liked the outdoors, going on hunting trips with his father.

He was of mixed race, born to Japanese-born mother and white father, with an older sister who became a nurse and moved away.

“I would ask him how school was … he would never bring up concerns of bullying or being a loaner there,” Axen said.

“How do we come out of tragedy? We need to say ‘No more!’ This is a tragic event. It happens too frequently,” said Captain Robert Lewis of Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station, striking an emotional note in an otherwise somber news conference.

There was no immediate word on where the teen gunman obtained the weapon.

‘RUN!’

A 16-year-old Saugus High School junior named Pamela, who spoke to Reuters on condition that she not give her last name, said she was in her first-period choir class when some girls ran into the room and said there was a shooting going on.

“Our teacher immediately grabbed a fire extinguisher and got us into her office and locked the door,” Pamela said, adding that one of the girls had been shot in the shoulder.

Taylor Hardges reported seeing people running in the hallways shouting “Run!” She raced into a classroom, where a teacher barricaded the room.

“We’ve had drills. It doesn’t prepare you for the real thing,” she said after reuniting with her father at a designated spot in Santa Clarita’s Central Park.

Her father, Terrence Hardges, said he felt his heart race after Taylor texted him from inside the classroom with the message: “I love you. I’m pinned in a room. We’re locked in.”

The scene at Saugus High School was reminiscent of other mass shootings at schools across the United States, including the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a former student with an assault gun killed 17 people on Feb. 14, 2018.

In August, survivors of that shooting released a sweeping gun-control plan that would ban assault-style rifles and take other steps with the aim of halving U.S. firearms deaths and injuries within a decade.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School, where two teenagers went on a rampage, fatally shooting 12 students and a teacher and wounding more than 20 others before killing themselves.

The shooting at Saugus marked the 85th incident of gunfire at a school this year, according to Everytown, a gun control advocacy group. It seems sure to reignite a debate over gun control in the 2020 presidential election.