On Friday, a gunman walked into Santa Fe High School in Texas and opened fire. He killed ten people and injured a further thirteen. The shooting was perpetrated by a 17-year-old gunman named Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who reportedly planned to end it by killing himself, but didn’t have the chops to do it in the end. Coverage of the shooting was overshadowed in the media by the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but in the days since the incident happened, the survivors and the victims’ loved ones have been speaking out about it.
Paige Curry, one of the survivors of the shooting, has said in an interview where she was visibly traumatised and shaken by the incident that she, at least on some level, expected this to happen.
She thought that, what with all the shootings going on in schools across America, “eventually it would happen here, too.” The school was in Texas, which is one of the most heavily armed states in the US with a gun ownership rate of 35.7% in a country with very lenient gun laws and almost weekly school shooting incidents.
This school shooting is the third deadly attack in Texas that has made headlines across the globe over the course of just six months. Back in November, a shooter killed a huge total of 26 people in an incident at Sutherland Springs. And in March, five bombings were set off over a period of 19 days by what is known as a “serial bomber,” which luckily killed only two people in total.
The ten fatalities in the Santa Fe incident have brought the total number of American teenagers killed in school this year to more than the number of American soldiers killed in active duty overseas, so make of that what you will.
Texas Governor promises ‘swift’ change to gun laws
Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, appeared at a church vigil on Sunday alongside the families and well-wishers of the victims and survivors of the shooting, to remember the ten who lost their lives and pray for them.
After the service, he gave a statement in which he pledged to make a “swift” change to the state gun laws that allowed for this to happen. The memorial service, which was attended mostly by the parents of Santa Fe High School students and the students themselves whose upcoming graduation was celebrated, took place at the Arcadia First Baptist Church.
Abbott promised that he will use this shooting incident to represent a watershed moment, or “a catalyst” as he puts it, in the gun laws of Texas. This will start the state on “a pathway to reforms,” according to him, where there will be all that came before this school shooting and everything that will come after it. This is a moment of change, or at least that’s how Abbott is selling it at a memorial service for the victims. He said, “Beginning this next week, it’s time to go to work,” in order to ensure that future high school students don’t have to endure another “nightmare” like this one.
Second suspect in custody, believed to be an accomplice
The police have the shooter Pagourtzis in custody, since he didn’t have the stomach to go through with killing himself after the shooting, and they also arrested an 18-year-old second suspect, who they believe may be an accomplice in the plotting of the shooting incident.
Pagourtzis was armed with both a shotgun and a .38 calibre handgun when he marched into Santa Fe High School and started shooting in an art lesson. Of the ten people that he killed, eight of them were students and the other two were teachers who worked for the school. The charges against the shooter as of now, before it goes to trial, are that he is accused of capital murder. He won’t get the death penalty, because he’s a minor and that counts as cruel and unusual punishment.
