Texas gov.: 10 dead in high school shooting – live updates

SANTA FE, Texas — Ten people were killed and 10 wounded in a shooting Friday morning at a high school south of Houston, authorities said. The shooting at Santa Fe High School was the nation’s deadliest such attack since the massacre in Florida that gave rise to a campaign by teens for gun control.

Nine students and a teacher were killed in the Friday’s shooting, law enforcement sources told CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton. Another 10 people were wounded, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at an afternoon news conference.

The suspect in custody was identified as 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset said in a statement. He was being held without bond on a charge of capital murder. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the suspect was believed to be a student at the school.

Abbot said officials found explosive devices, including a Molotov cocktail, in the school and nearby. He called the assault “one of the most heinous attacks that we’ve ever seen in the history of Texas schools.”

Police also found pressure cookers and pipe bombs around the school, a law enforcement source told CBS News.

Two people of interest were being interviewed by authorities, Abbot said. He didn’t identify them.

According to a law enforcement source, the suspect posted to social media “Dangerous Days” with a pentagram on Friday before the shooting, Milton reports.   

Abbott said the suspect had said that he wanted to commit suicide after the shooting. “He gave himself up and admitted at the time that he didn’t have the courage to commit the suicide,” he said.

There was an active search for explosives, a federal law enforcement source told CBS News justice and homeland security correspondent Jeff Pegues. Authorities were in the process of rendering them safe and asked the public to call 911 if they see anything suspicious.

Sources confirmed to Pegues that authorities were searching property related to the suspect.

“We experienced an unthinkable tragedy at our high school this morning,” schools Superintendent Leigh Wall said in a message posted to Facebook. 

Two students and a school resource officer were shot and injured in the shooting, CBS News has learned. Another law enforcement officer was also injured but was not shot.

One hospital reported treating eight wounded patients. Six were treated and released. One was listed in critical condition, and another in fair condition.

The suspect had a shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver, Abbott said. The suspect’s father owned the weapons legally, Abbott said, adding that he didn’t know whether the father was aware his son had obtained the weapons.

Student Damon Rabon told CBSN that he looked out his classroom door with a substitute teacher after hearing several loud bangs and saw the gunman.

“Black trench coat, short kind of guy, had a sawed-off shotgun,” Damon said.

The substitute teacher then pulled the fire alarm in the hopes of alerting students and faculty in other areas of the school and getting them to evacuate.

Tyler Turner, a senior at the school, told CBS affiliate KHOU-TV that his friend saw “some kid” with a gun. When teachers and students were outside after the fire alarm was pulled, shots were fired, Turner said.

“As soon as the alarms went off, everybody just started running outside,” sophomore Dakota Shrader told reporters, “and next thing you know everybody looks, and you hear boom, boom, boom, and I just ran as fast as I could to the nearest floor so I could hide, and I called my mom.”

Turner said he ran behind some trees, heard more shots, jumped a fence and ran to a car wash. He said he saw firefighters treat a girl who had a bandage around her knee and may have been shot.

Stuart Villanueva/The Galveston County Daily News via AP

One student told Houston television station KTRK in a telephone interview that a gunman came into her first-period art class and started shooting. The student said she saw one girl with blood on her leg as the class evacuated the room.

“We thought it was a fire drill at first but really, the teacher said, ‘Start running,'” the student told the television station.

The student said she didn’t get a good look at the shooter because she was running away. She said students escaped through a door at the back of the classroom. Authorities have not yet confirmed that report.

Students from the high school were transported to another location to reunite with their parents.  

A parent told KHOU-TV that some students were evacuated to an auto shop near the campus.

Aerial footage from the scene showed students standing in a grassy field and three life-flight helicopters landing at the school in Santa Fe, a city of about 13,000 residents roughly 30 miles southeast of Houston.

President Trump, who was in Washington, initially reacted to the shooting on Twitter.

Later, while speaking at an event on prison reform, Mr. Trump said it was a “very sad day.”

“This has been going on too long in our country,” he said. “Too many years, too many decades now. We grieve for the terrible loss of life and send our support and love to everyone affected by this absolutely horrific attack. To the students, families, teachers and personnel at Santa Fe High, we’re with you in this tragic hour, and we will be with you forever.”

According to a law enforcement official, the FBI was offering assistance, Milton reports.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said it was responding.

There was a large law enforcement response to the same school in February when it was placed on lockdown after students and teachers said they heard “popping sounds.” Santa Fe police swept the campus but found no threat.

The shooting on Friday was all but certain to re-ignite the national debate over gun regulations, coming just three months after the Florida attack that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, survivors pulled all-nighters, petitioned city councils and state lawmakers, and organized protests in a grass-roots movement.

Within weeks, state lawmakers adopted changes, including new weapons restrictions. The move cemented the gun-friendly state’s break with the National Rifle Association (NRA), who fought back with a lawsuit.

In late March, the Parkland teens spearheaded one of the largest student protest marches since Vietnam in Washington and inspired hundreds of other marches from California to Japan.

The calls for tighter gun controls that have swelled since February have barely registered in Texas — at least to this point.

Texas has some of the most permissive gun laws in the U.S. and just hosted the NRA’s annual conference earlier this month. In the run-up to March primaries, gun control was not a main issue with candidates of either party. Republicans did not soften their views on guns, and Democrats campaigned on a range of issues instead of zeroing in on gun violence.