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Mother Says Her Daughter Was Targeted by Shooter

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SANTA FE, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the mass shooting at a Texas high school (all times local):

5:30 p.m.

The mother of school shooting victim Shana Fisher says she thinks her 16-year-old daughter was intentionally targeted by Dimitrios Pagourtzi.

Sadie Rodriguez says Pagourtzi repeatedly made advances toward Fisher in the four months leading up to the shooting. She says Pagourtzi was an ex-boyfriend of Fisher’s best friend.

Rodriguez says: “He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no,” but the advances got more aggressive.

The week before the shooting, Rodriguez says that her daughter “stood up to him” by embarrassing him in class.

Rodriguez described her daughter as a “shy and sweet” girl with a passion for video games. She shared a video of Fisher from 2015, in which the teen contemplates whether or not she’ll continue making gaming videos because her computer keeps crashing.

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4:15 p.m.

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott says three days of round table discussions on how curb school shootings will begin Tuesday.

Abbott, a Republican, tweeted Saturday that the meetings will seek “to craft policies to better protect students & teachers & schools.”

A 17-year-old student is accused of opening fire inside his high school in Santa Fe, near Houston, on Friday, killing 10 people and wounding 13 others.

Abbott had promised to convene state officials and others on both sides of the gun debate — including victims of Friday’s shooting and a deadly church shooting in November in the town of Sutherland Springs, near San Antonio.

Addressing reporters Friday, Abbott didn’t mention gun control but said “we need to do more than just pray for the victims and the families.”

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4 p.m.

The family of the 17-year-old student accused of opened fire on his Texas high school, killing 10 people and wounding 13 others, says what happened “seems incompatible with the boy we love.”

Dmitrios Pagourtzis family said in a statement Saturday, “We are as shocked and confused as anyone else by these events that occurred” while offering prayers and condolences to the victims.

The family said it remained “mostly in the dark about the specifics of yesterday’s tragedy” but “what we have learned from media reports seems incompatible with the boy we love.” It added, “We share the public’s hunger for answers as to why this happened, and will await the outcome of the investigation before speaking about these events.”

Pagourtzis is being held on capital murder charges. Investigators say he admitted “shooting multiple people.”

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3:30 p.m.

Authorities have released the names of the 10 people who were killed in the mass shooting at a Texas high school.

The Galveston County medical examiner’s office and sheriff’s office issued a statement Saturday listing those killed as: Glenda Perkins; Cynthia Tisdale; Kimberly Vaughan; Shana Fisher; Angelique Ramirez; Christian Riley Garcia; Jared Black; Sabika Sheikh; Christopher Jake Stone; and Aaron Kyle McLeod.

Perkins and Tisdale were teachers. The others were students at Santa Fe High School.

Authorities say a 17-year-old student, Dmitrios Pagourtzis (puh-GOR’-cheez), opened fire in the school southeast of Houston on Friday, killing 10 people and injuring at least 13 others. He faces murder charges.

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2:45 p.m.

The FBI says 13 people, not 10, were injured in the mass shooting at a Texas high school in which 10 people were killed.

The agency’s Houston office tweeted the updated injured count on Saturday.

A 17-year-old student is being held on murder charges in Friday’s attack at the high school in Santa Fe, which is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Houston.

The updated FBI number still doesn’t fully explain the discrepancy with the number of wounded reported by hospitals.

Area hospitals reported Friday that they had treated 14 people for injuries related to the shooting. But it’s not clear whether some of those weren’t directly related to the attack.

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2:20 p.m.

A Colorado man says his nephew was among the 10 people who were killed in the mass shooting at a Texas high school.

Robert Stone told The Associated Press by phone Saturday that authorities officially notified his family that his nephew, Chris Stone, was among those killed in Friday’s attack at Santa Fe High School. He says he’s driving from Colorado to Santa Fe, about 30 miles southeast of Houston, to be with his family. He declined to comment further, saying his family wants to maintain its privacy.

Freshman student Abel San Miguel told the AP that Chris Stone was one of the students who tried to block the door to an art classroom to prevent the shooter from entering. San Miguel, who was in the classroom, says the attacker fired his shotgun through the door, hitting Stone in the chest.

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1:20 p.m.

Students at a Texas high school where a gunman killed 10 people are being allowed inside the building to get car keys and other belongings they left behind.

Walter Braun, the school district’s chief of police, said at a news conference Saturday that the students will be allowed inside Santa Fe High School in groups of no more than 10 and would be accompanied by officers. He said about 50 students had been admitted as of Saturday afternoon and that others would be allowed in for about three more hours.

Braun and other officials declined to answer questions about the investigation into Friday’s shooting, deferring to the FBI, which has taken the lead.

Authorities say it was carried out by a 17-year-old student, Dmitrios Pagourtzis (puh-GOR’-cheez), who faces murder charges.

At least 10 people were injured in the attack, including a school police officer who was shot and wounded. Braun says the officer remains in critical condition.

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11:50 a.m.

A Texas official says explosive devices found with the suspected gunman at a high school near Houston weren’t capable of detonating.

Galveston County Judge Mark Henry said Saturday that authorities found a group of carbon dioxide canisters taped together, and a pressure cooker with an alarm clock and nails inside. But he says the canisters had no detonation device and the pressure cooker had no explosive material.

Henry also says police exchanged “a lot of firepower” with 17-year-old Dmitrios Pagourtzis (puh-GOR’-cheez) before the Santa Fe High School student surrendered.

The shooting took place in an art room Friday morning on the roughly 1,400-student campus.

Pagourtzis in jailed on murder charges.

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11 a.m.

Pakistani businessman Abdul Aziz Sheikh says he learned of the tragedy unfolding at a high school in Texas when he turned on the TV after iftar, the fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Realizing it was the school where his 18-year-old daughter, Sabika, was an exchange student, he flipped through channels trying to learn more and left her messages, but she didn’t reply.

He called his daughter’s friends, but they weren’t responding either. It was only when he reached the exchange program that he got the bad news: Sabika Khan was among the 10 people killed in Friday’s mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, southeast of Houston.

Fighting back tears, her father told The Associated Press on Saturday in Karachi that Sabika was due home in about three weeks for the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. He says he thought she would be safe in the U.S.

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9:30 a.m.

The head of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee says the teenager suspected of killing 10 people and wounding others at a Texas high school collapsed while giving himself up, avoiding a police confrontation.

Republican Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, a former federal prosecutor, says 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis (puh-GOR’-cheez) “sort of fell to the ground and surrendered.”

McCaul said late Friday that Pagourtzis wore a trench coat despite the sweltering temperatures earlier that day “to hide the shotgun and .38-caliber underneath” during the attack at Santa Fe High School near Houston.

He says authorities recovered a couple of explosive devices at the school and “several” in Pagourtzis’ vehicle and home, and that they’ve been sent for testing to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.

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8:40 a.m.

A hospital treating three of the people injured in the mass shooting at a Texas high school says one patient, who is a minor, is in good condition and the other two patients are in critical condition.

The University of Texas Medical Branch tweeted the update Saturday.

Hospitals on Friday reported treating a total of 14 people for injuries related to the shooting.

Ten people, mostly students, were killed in the attack Friday at the high school in Santa Fe, about 30 miles southeast of Houston. A 17-year-old student, Dimitrios Pagourtzis (puh-GOR’-cheez), has been arrested in the attack on murder charges.

The shooting was the deadliest school attack since 17 were killed in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

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The post Mother Says Her Daughter Was Targeted by Shooter appeared first on The National Herald.


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