Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Santa Fe shooter, a teen boy church dance team member & JV football player, seen joking at waterpark day before massacre
Episode Date: May 21, 2018New disturbing details are emerging in the wake of a student's deadly rampage at Texas high school. Nancy Grace looks at the massacre with former DEA Agent, active shooter expert David Katz, private i...nvestigator Vincent Hill, psycho analyst Dr. Bethany Marshall, juvenile judge & lawyer Ashley Willcott, & reporter John Lemley. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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A teen boy opens fire in a Texas high school, gunning down 10 people. This morning, we pick up the pieces as we learn this kid, this boy, had been studying previous mass shooters,
using what he learned when he carried out his own massacre.
I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
Thank you for being with us.
How can we stop it?
Who is this teen boy killer? Take a listen to one child that lived to tell the tale.
Hear another loud bang and I look over and I see a guy with a pistol and a longer gun on him.
And I jumped under the table, heard another loud bang and I flipped the table up in front of
me for some protection these people are like let's go let's go and I just took off running
I still idea that I had been shot yet it went in through the back of my head just right like kind
of in the middle of the back of my head and they came out right here I took off running out the
door and there's a seven foot wall out there and just my adrenaline
was so high that I just propelled myself over the wall.
He got shot in the back of the head at C1.
He could have been a quadriplegic and it went in clean and when the doctor told me it went
in clean and it went out clean.
I just feel lucky to be here.
I just wish this didn't happen.
It shouldn't happen to anybody in that school.
Nobody deserves that.
You know, so often we catch ourselves to Ashley Wilcott,
juvenile judge, lawyer, founder of ChildCrimeWatch.com. Also with me, investigative reporter with Crime Stories, John Limley,
Dr. Bethany Marshall, LA psychoanalyst, Vincent Hill, private investigator, and David Katz,
former DEA agent and active shooter expert. Ashley Wilcott, so many times we say,
why did this happen to me? Why did that happen to me? Here's a child that lived,
that was shot in the head and lived. It's a miracle, I would say, Ashley.
Yeah, it absolutely is. And can you imagine you send your kids to school where they should be
safe, where you think they're safe, where you think that they're getting the education they
need, they deserve. And then you find out, oh, wait, another school shooting.
It's an absolute miracle that this boy survived.
You know what I was thinking about this morning, Dr. Bethany Marshall,
and all of you experts, Vincent Hill, David Katz, John Lindley, just hold on a moment.
We ladies are talking mom to mom, sister to sister.
Dr. Bethany, this morning when i dropped the children at school
i looked out at them and lucy had on this really heavy backpack okay she was taking a project in
it was stuffed in it was really heavy and she was wearing a skort you know it looks like a skirt on
the outside but it's really shorts underneath and the skort had was caught in the backpack so
little skirt part was caught up under her backpack you could see her shorts
and I knew that although you didn't see her underwear you could see her shorts
that that would totally she's the kind of person that would be read all day
long so I yelled out through the window just to John Davis said tell Lucy to fix
her score in the back.
And then I drove away and I turned and I just broke down in tears because I thought of all those parents. I was worried about Lucy's skort.
Okay.
And all those parents that left their children that day and they never saw them alive again.
They got a text or a phone call, hurry, hurry,
hurry, hurry. And you know immediately that something is horribly wrong, Dr. Bethany.
You know, Nancy, and there was one parent, her daughter texted her and the parent started
furiously texting her daughter's friends saying, don't text my daughter because she knew her daughter was
holed up in a closet and the mother did not want the killer to find her daughter. To me,
I can't imagine the agony the mother went through. And in terms of grief, you know what it's like to
be a parent. You put all of your energy, your time, your attachment, your love, your focus into this child. And then
it just comes to an abrupt halt. There's no breakfast the next morning. There's no homework
that you're going to help your child with. There's no future. And I once heard about grieving.
Grieving is disillusionment. When you grieve, you dismantle your illusion that you will have a
future with this person as you imagined it.
So those parents are not only thinking about the trauma, the parents who have lost a child,
their minds are going through everything they hoped for for this child, college, weddings,
family outings, and adjusting to the fact that those things will never happen, all because of this one shooter.
You know, Dr. Bethany, you're ripping my heart in two, because I'm sure like all these other parents in Texas, that's my whole life. I gear everything toward them getting out of school
that night. What are we going to be doing? what am i going to make for dinner what project do we have to work on what soccer practice and it's not that i'm a a rat on a
treadmill running i want to do it all sometimes my husband will say oh let me take them to soccer
practice i'm like no i want to go you want to get all the fun no it's just I'm thinking about all these parents this morning I want you to
listen to students telling us from their own mouth in their own words what they
saw my friend heard he saw a guy walking with a gun and so he pulled the fire
alarm and we were all standing outside in the back.
And then the teacher started, you know, freaking out.
They were saying, you know, back up.
And then Vaughn, Mr. Vaughn, said run.
So everybody took off.
I heard three shots, and then I grabbed her.
We ran to the trees over here to get out of, you know, sight.
And then I called my mom, and I heard four more shots.
So we came to this car wash over here, and then I met with my mom and I heard four more shots. So we came to this car wash over here and then I met with my mom and everything and heard about everything.
And there was a girl that we saw coming this way towards the car wash and she had a bandage around her kneecap.
She apparently got shot in the kneecap and she was sitting in the car or something like that.
And someone came and got her, some firemen.
And then from there, we've just been trying to hear everything that's been going on.
I was just sitting in class and all of a sudden the fire alarm went off i thought it was just a
fire drill so we went outside i left my bag inside and i met up with him and then all these teachers
telling us to get back and then uh people were like running and leaving and they were like come
back like don't run off and then all of a sudden we heard, like, three, like, pops, like, gunshots.
So then we all just took off running.
He grabbed my hand, and we ran, and then we ran through the bushes,
and I got caught in the barbed wire and got a cut on my ankle.
And then we heard more shots in the street next to that car wash,
and then we went to the car wash and waited, and then his mom showed up.
I heard around four to five shots.
I don't know. As soon as I figured out what they up. I heard around four to five shots. I don't know,
as soon as I figured out what they were, I started to run to hide. So students reported hearing the
fire alarm first and then the shots. Is that what, is that kind of a sequence of events for you? No,
I heard the shots first and then the alarms went off after I hid. We were all in a line and there
were lots of, lots of SWATs and police around. They escorted us all out. We were in a single file line, and we came down here to the Chevron.
I was thinking it was going to happen eventually.
It happens.
It's been happening everywhere.
I was ready to run out, but my teacher told me to hide instead, so that's what I did.
The fire drill went off, and we all thought it was a fire drill, so we walked out normally.
Then all of a sudden, I hear a pop, and they're pushing us closer to the back fence.
Well, then a coach comes, or a teacher comes and starts yelling at us, run, run.
So we're running across the highway, and then we just had to keep running. And then we went to Indian Automotive, and they hit us there for a while.
And then we walked out, and that was pretty much it.
I'm just imagining that moment when the students turn to the teacher, and the teacher says,
Run! Run!
With me is David Katz, former DEA and active shooter expert,
John Limley, investigative reporter, Vincent Hill, Bethany Marshall,
Ashley Wilcott. John Limley, what do we know about how the shooting went down?
Well, the school day, Nancy, had just gotten underway. That's how this case is different from the other 21, 22 school shootings this year alone. It's around 7 o'clock with just days to go before
summer vacation. This is a Friday, so students are naturally excited about all of this. This is
always a tough time to be a teacher because it's a challenge for them to keep the students'
attention for longer than 30 seconds at a time. Now one of those students was the one that
we heard from at the very outset of the program today. His name is Rome Schubert. He's a sophomore
at Santa Fe High School. He walked into art class Friday morning at 7.03 as he usually does to
finish a project before school gets started.
A little bit about him, he's a star pitcher on the baseball team.
He had thrown 11 strikeouts in the team's playoff game the night before while giving up no earned runs,
but was still agonizing over the team's 4-0 loss.
Now, about 40 minutes later, a gunman walks into the classroom and starts shooting. As we heard, Rome said he heard a loud pop from the hallway, but really didn't think anything about
it at first. After more shots were fired, he jumped to the floor, pushed a table between himself and
the entrance to the classroom and they again were in art
class this was the first classroom that the shooter entered that morning Rome
said that he actually saw the gunman's legs covered by a trench coat as he
walked right past him and fired at the ground right next to him. He was carrying both a shotgun and a handgun.
At first, Rome thought the shooter might have been firing blanks to scare students, but then he
realized very quickly that the rounds were live when he saw a student covered in blood next to
him. And as we've heard, acting on on pure adrenaline he sprinted to a rear
exit in the room and bounded over a seven-foot wall at this point he doesn't
even realize that he himself has been shot in the back of the head
oh my stars doesn't realize he's been shot in the back of the head I want to
go to David Katz former DEA agent and active shooter expert.
But first, David, I want you to hear the dispatch call.
Santa Fe PD is requesting mutual aid.
All that is shooting at the high school.
Have an officer down.
Shooter not in custody.
Santa Fe ISD.
Contact.
Disconnected.
City of Dickinson and Medic 1, need you to stay
for a shooting at Santa Fe School, 1600 Highway 6, and get a beach for Santa Fe, shooting
at the school. We have several shots fired.
Possibly one or two rooms in this area that we're at.
Where are you? Upstairs or downstairs?
Upstairs. What's the spot?
Northside. First floor, northside.
Center part of the building.
Still have several more shots.
Thanks, AMA.
To be for Santa Fe High School,
need you to stay for school shooting.
I'm active shooting several people down.
We're also need a flight for an officer down.
10-4, we got him.
Come get this victim.
Come get this victim.
You're clear.
Come get this victim.
10-6-7-0-4, we're coming out the front doors.
West center, ETA.
We're flying to the northwest corner of the complex.
We need to get coverage on the outside.
We believe he's barricaded inside.
We need to watch.
He's actually shooting. He's in the art room.
We've got shots fired right now, guys.
We need to help you.
Does anybody know if there's still kids inside?
Are they all evacuated?
Kids in the dance hall.
I'm talking to them now.
Carol.
Texas City, 815.
This subject is in custody.
At least one parent has been cursed.
And at this time, he's advising me to put out his deed.
We might have lives on the site for him.
All units, all units.
This is just advising there's possibly a pipe bomb, pressure cooker bomb somewhere in this area.
Wow.
David Katz, former GEA active shooter expert.
At first they thought it was a pressure cooker bomb.
Some of them did anyway.
How do you analyze what has happened?
Well, I mean, just so you can hear the absolute chaos,
which is so common in every one of these incidents.
But the first and most important thing to realize is in this particular case,
unlike what happened in Parkland, the officers went in and confronted the suspect.
I was down in Houston.
I just got back to New York last night.
I was doing active shooter training for one of our clients down there.
I was with a bunch of Houston cops.
One of the resource officers was a retired Houston cop
who presumably took the job as a resource officer out there
for somewhat of a quiet post-law enforcement position.
And yet this guy, unlike what happened in Parkland,
did not cower, did not shrink from duty.
He immediately engaged the suspect,
and God knows how many lives he saved by doing so.
We are talking about the tragedy, the school shooting.
A Santa Fe High School student studied previous mass shootings
and used what he learned from them in his own massacre. This teen boy lived.
So many others died. Why? It went in through the back of my head, just right, like kind of in the
middle of the back of my head, and then came out right here. I took off running out the door,
and there's a seven-foot wall out there.
My adrenaline was so high that I just propelled myself over the wall.
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A teen boy opens fire in a Texas high school, mowing down 10 people. This guy studied previous mass shootings, using what he learned to carry out his own evil massacre.
What can we learn to David Katz, former GEA agent, active shooter expert?
What do we know about this boy?
Well, it keeps saying that there are no red flags, but that's not going to be true.
And as we go deeper into the investigation, I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that this guy had a number no red flags, but that's not going to be true. And as we go deeper into the investigation,
I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that this guy had a number of red flags.
Just a couple months ago, I think it was end of March,
the Secret Service released a great report that analyzed active shooter incidents,
actually mass attack incidents, more focusing not on the incident,
but actually on the perpetrators. And of the, they looked at a number of
warning signs and things that were common in the persons who perpetrated these attacks.
One of the things they talk about is fascination with prior mass attack incidents.
This guy evidenced that.
They talk about stresses in their life.
They talk about a number of things.
They also talk about a personality disorder called aggressive
narcissism. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, when you look at this kid,
you're going to find him to be very, very consistent with the profile. It's kind of
going against the reporting that's happening now, but there is no possibility that someone is just
a normal everyday kid and somebody doesn't have a warning sign,
particularly the parents.
Well, what do you make of this, too?
Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. psychoanalyst, and then to you, Ashley,
what do you make of the little girl victim that had rejected, as she said,
his creepy advances just before the shooting?
He singled her out and shot her dead.
Well, one of the things we see with mass shooters is a perceived power differential
between them and at least one other person or the public,
and sometimes that relates to a recent loss, like they've lost a job,
they've lost money, they've lost a love relationship.
So this could have been perceived of as a loss.
The other thing we see, I like the use of the term aggressive narcissism.
I would use the term malignant narcissist.
That's what we use in my field.
But the narcissist experiences the reactions of everybody around them as a slight, a diminishment.
They feel easily insulted, attacked.
So when they're turned down, even in minor benign ways, they feel deflated and attacked, and then they want to go on the attack. So my understanding is that this little girl, after he approached her relentlessly
for four months, she stood up in the middle of a classroom and said, basically, I'm not going to
go out with you. And to me, that could have been the final insult, diminishment, power differential,
where he just wanted to go back in, mow her down and everybody else in his path. That little girl, Shanna Fisher, just absolutely gorgeous, a teen girl,
she died in the attack, and her parents say she had at least four months of problems from this boy.
Her father, Timothy, says that his daughter, Shanna,
actually predicted the trench coat wearing teen shooter would harm her after she rejected him.
She told her mother two weeks ago, I know this guy's going to come and kill me.
I know this guy's going to come and kill me.
And if he does, if he comes into the school with a gun, I'm going to haunt him the rest of his life.
Those were the teen girl's words.
She was so scared.
Ashley Wilcott, you have three children.
One a teen, one about to be a teen.
I mean, to take rejection.
I mean, I felt rejected every single day of high school.
I thought everybody felt that way.
But this is so hard to take in.
And we live in a new world, Nancy.
So part of my job as a juvenile court judge is I have to look at warrants to determine if there's probable cause. And a lot of the warrants that I see come in now are specifically about kids at schools who
make threats of shooting people, of bringing bombs, of bringing guns to school. And so what I've seen
repeatedly is, number one, it is true. There are signs with these kids who are making these threats
and following through with them or not. And this is a sure sign. This girl knew in her gut.
Trust your gut.
These kids we need to respect.
They know what the other kids are like.
And so if you have a kid ever saying,
oh my gosh, this person creeps me out
or this person, I swear they're going to kill me.
They're going to come to school.
They're going to bring a gun.
That is something everyone needs to act on
because it's a whole different world we live in.
To protect our children, we cannot assume that that's not going to happen anymore.
To John Lindley, Crime Stories investigative reporter, what can you tell me about this kid, this teen boy, actually planting bombs?
Right. He had obviously been working on bombs as well. From what police say, he hadn't quite perfected this part of his plan. They found pieces of bombs both in the school and at his home. One of those was a Molotov cocktail. They are still investigating if there are other bombs that he possibly planted, and
who knows, maybe one of these was one that could have done some damage. Luckily, it was
the two guns alone that created the carnage on Friday. You know, his family describes him as quiet and sweet. And apparently he became more
and more aggressive with the little girl, Shanna, until she finally rejected him publicly in class,
according to the mother. Now, what does this mean? This romantic rejection seems to take place just one week before the attack.
I mean, think about it.
Vincent Hill, private investigator, guns, pressure cooker bombs, Molotov cocktails.
How could his parents not have known what was going on?
Don't they ever go in his room?
Nancy said it best.
And I'll go back to what the agent said as well.
When are we going to start policing our children? I mean, look, it was 90 degrees when this shooting occurred. He leaves the house in a trench coat and it seems to be that the fallback always is, oh, he was a great kid. But I can tell you, if my son left the house in 90 degree weather in a trench coat, I'm going to stop him at the door and say, where are you going? I assure you, I check his bag when he leaves for school. I check his bag when he comes home. He's
17. These are things we have to do as parents, because at some point, we need to start holding
these parents responsible for what their kids do when they go to these schools and they kill this
many people. I mean, there were warning signs to david katz former dea active shooter expert
uh on his facebook page uh pogorczis shares photos of a black t-shirt that says born to kill across
the front other photos that were on his page the very same day, showed a dark-colored trench coat decked out with the Nazi iron cross
and a communist hammer and sickle.
There are photos showing a handgun and a knife on his,
what we believe to be his Instagram account.
I mean, if my, and I prosecuted a lot, a lot of gun violence david this gun looks evil it
almost looks as if it's been spray painted black along with the knife even the even the uh
the sharp end of the knife is black and other all of the equipment looks like it's been spray
painted black david katz what parent doesn't know this?
I mean, every day when the twins come home, I unpack their backpacks.
I know what's in there.
How can you not know your kid?
It looks like they're on a bed also, on his bed.
How can you not know your kid has access to automatic weapons?
Well, he had, I don't know, I don't know what's in the house and such.
I mean, I've been a shooter for over 50 years now,
and my children know how to handle weapons in a safe and appropriate manner.
But in this particular case, the fact that he's displaying
that fascination with weapons, that's an indicator of a perpetrator of a violent act.
The fact that he's able to apparently
go there. Apparently there was some offside
dead or trailer that he was able to go there
and assemble these
fortunately non-functioning
explosive devices. How do you
not know? Well, you're not engaged with your child.
We see this endemic
in the country because
as your other guests have pointed out, as a parent, you need to insert yourself in every aspect of your child's life, period.
And the idea, for example, this kid apparently didn't just leave the house with a trench coat that day.
That was his style.
Now, I don't know if he was doing that to desensitize folks for the day he finally came in with a weapon underneath
the coat.
But that trench coat, that is a homage, if you will, to the Columbine shooters.
Oh, yeah, totally.
You can't look at all those warning signs and say, this kid has an issue that we need
to deal with.
There's something wrong at all levels.
You know, this shows me that he knew exactly what he was doing and he intended to do it.
Dr. Bethany Marshall, listen to this.
A little girl named Isabel survived by lying motionless for nearly an hour on the floor of a barricaded closet,
lying beside dead bodies of her classmates.
And then cell phones all over the classroom start ringing.
And this kid, the shooter, is taunting the other children who were hiding in the closet
by asking, do you think the phone's for you?
You think that's for you?
You want to come answer it?
Then he fires bullets into the closet trying to get in.
I mean, he knew what he was doing.
He intended to do this.
That shows his sadism.
Absolutely.
And, you know, these shooters, there's never been one shooter that we've covered or in U.S. history that I've known about who has not written about
or predicted the crime somewhere. They love to write about it before they carry out the crime.
So, you know, back in the day, it could be writing in a journal, writing letters to their teachers
or to the principal. Now it seems to be writing on the internet, showing videos. The preparation
for the crime is as important to them as the crime itself because what they're planning on doing
is having their glory day, reversing the power differential, pushing back psychically into the students, their own feeling of having
been bullied and diminished.
You've bullied me.
You've diminished me.
I'm going to have power over you.
But the act of shooting is just the coup de grace of something that is usually planned
for a long, long time.
So back to what you're saying, you know, the phones are ringing and he's saying,
was that for you?
Is that for you?
He, in his mind,
believes he's been bullied
by these students.
That's the state of mind he's in.
So now he's bullying them.
It's a reversal of sorts.
And so when you said,
how could the parents not know?
You can know.
It's not,
it doesn't take a PhDd to figure out if somebody's
going to go shoot somebody there are very clear indicators and in my mind what the person writes
and puts on their social media is the easiest way to determine if there's a motivation to go kill
people what do we know about this texas shooter boy? We know that he played JV football.
We know that he was on a church dance team. We know a lot about him, but we don't know
how this so-called sweet, quiet boy ended up causing this. She called me. She said,
Mom, there's shots. And I said, what? She said, there's shots in the school.
And she was crying.
I turned around and just hauled it all the way to the school.
I'm like, are we having another false alarm?
Like, what's happening?
It wasn't.
Obviously, it wasn't a false alarm this time.
She said, Mom, there's shots.
I immediately turned around.
I said, I'm coming.
I'm coming.
I stayed on the phone with her all the time.
And just kept talking to her.
I kept telling her to stay calm, stay quiet, until the police finally let her out. I didn't know I'm coming. I stayed on the phone with her all the time and just kept talking to her, kept telling her to stay calm, stay quiet until the police finally let her out.
I didn't know what to think.
I shouldn't be going through this at my school.
Like, this is my daily life.
I shouldn't have to feel like that.
And I feel scared to even go back.
It was nothing I would ever want another person to have to see.
It was horrible.
I looked up between the legs of a chair,
and he locked eyes with me.
You made eye contact with him. I did make eye contact with him and he had a he had a face of rage. He was mad. Why? I don't know. He first opened fire with a shotgun in which he shot
one of my other friends in the head and her body fell down not too far away from where I was into
the table. That is when he turned like this and opened fire with the revolver. So he had two guns. He had two guns, a sawed-off shotgun and then a revolver. And students were running around
screaming. One kid flipped a table up just for cover. Everybody just started running outside
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 forest so I could hide, and I called my mom.
What do we know about this boy, the so-called Santa Fe school shooter?
We know that he is a teen boy.
He is a member, was a member of the Santa Fe High School JV football team,
a member of a dance squad with a local Greek Orthodox church. In fact,
there's a video of him dancing in a Greek Orthodox outfit, you know, shortly before the shooting.
He's described as quiet and unassuming. We know he's an avid video game player. He routinely wore
a black trench coat and black boots to class, but that would have just been written off as him being goth.
Pagortzis was really into video games that simulated war,
according to his friends.
He talked about guns.
He talked about firearms.
And he talked about liking them and wanted to get them,
but he never really talked about killing people.
He would sometimes enter a room acting a little bit down or sad.
He never said why.
He apparently admits to authorities when he opened fire,
he did not shoot students he did like so he could have his story told whoa so he could have his story told john limley crime
stories investigative reporter what more do we know about him and who to whom did these guns belong
we know there was a shot off sawed off shotgun and a revolver. Whose were they? Well, they did not belong to the shooter himself,
but they belonged to the father.
This is something that was first reported
in a special news conference from the Texas governor.
But sawed-off shotguns,
I remember the first time I prosecuted a case
where somebody had a sawed-off shotgun,
and I had never seen one and
for the rest of my time at the district attorney's office i kept that sawed-off shotgun on a shelf
to remind me what people are capable of doing i would never have thought to turn that Vincent Hill private eye shotgun literally sawed off just
not too far past the handle. That's illegal, isn't it, Vincent, to have a sawed-off shotgun?
Yeah, Nancy, it's illegal, and in my experience in my police days, it was never used for anything
good, if you know what I mean. Most people that I came across with, those were criminals of the worst kind.
So, you know, I don't even understand
why his parents would have a sawed-off shotgun inside the home.
That's another can of worms.
You know, I want to jump in.
Yeah, Nancy, it could not have been a sawed-off shotgun.
I think that's being misreported.
It was a Remington 870, probably with no stock.
So if you're familiar with firearms, you're going to have, instead of a stock,
you have a pistol grip in the rear and a pistol grip in the foreground.
The reason it can't be sawed-off is a Remington 870 pump shotgun has a tubular magazine,
so that's where these shells actually are loaded into.
If you saw that off, you know no longer have a magazine.
So I don't think it was a sawed-off shotgun.
It probably was one of these more combat-style shotguns that are very, very common.
You're absolutely right.
Yeah, yeah, I think you guys might be right.
Dr. Bethany Marshall, L.A. Psychoanalyst, what is all this telling you?
Well, that he had explosive rage, that he had a fascination with guns which actually
there's quite a bit of research that uh indicates that sociopaths tend to become they're very fond
of guns they love guns it's sort of like a hard object that they attach to they attach to the
power of the gun more than they attach to people.
According to one ER doctor, I read a report that he put buckshot in the guns. Your gun experts could
speak to this better than I could, but that because of the buckshot, there was much more
deadly force when he shot at the students. So he really intended to do carnage. It wasn't just to
have a few clean shots here and there, but true carnage, true gore. The idea that he wanted
to spare kids he liked so that they could talk about this. Shooters often want to go down in
infamy. They want to be be famous there's a grandiose
component to sociopathy and this i think is the grandiose piece and i think he spared you know
like just kids are in clicks i think he just spared the popular ones because he wanted the
popular ones to talk about him he was going to be in the popular circle in some twisted kind of way. Okay, that is freaky what you're saying right now.
To John Limley, I've been studying and poring over what his classmates are saying.
And a kid named Tyler who played football with him for the Santa Fe Indians, the suspect
was a defensive tackle on the JV team.
And he was saying at a vigil that he would never have suspected his former teammate
as being even remotely capable of a mass shooting,
that he had just been joking with him on a field trip to a Galveston water park
the day before the massacre, the day before the shooting.
Yet we know the shooting was carefully planned with all of the pressure cooker bombs
and getting the guns and the ammunition.
We know that it was very well planned.
Do I have the story straight, John Limley?
Absolutely. Even his family is in absolute shock over all of this.
They have said that their son was the sweetest, kindest boy, that he was very quiet, that nothing indicated that this was ahead. You were talking about Tyler Ray, that football
player that knew the Pogorzhi's family well. He was talking about that field trip that his
friend showed up for summer workouts, tried hard, even though he wasn't very athletic.
Apparently, he even sort of joked around
about the fact that he wasn't, you know, the world's greatest jock. His family came to the
games to support him, though they did have some money problems. They struggled to pay for the
equipment, but they were very supportive of their son. Well, this is another thing we know about him. We know about what was found in his home afterwards.
Listen to the Texas governor describing explosive found at the teen boy's home and at the school.
One was a CO2 device.
Another was a Molotov cocktail. And there are various other types of explosive devices
that have been identified both in a home as well as in a vehicle.
Wow. Okay. It was clearly, clearly planned. So there's no way an insanity defense is going to
work here. Dr. Bethany marshall he may be angry being anger
angry is not a defense he's not insane he was joking and laughing at a water park the day before
the day before the massacre goes down dr bethany i mean you've got to compare
a stark of a dichotomy as it is between what the victim's parents and family are going through.
Right now, this minute, as we're talking, as compared to claims,
this child, this boy was bullied or he was quiet or he was different.
Anger or revenge, being a social, perceiving yourself as a social outcast,
is not a defense.
And remember, he was on the defense, on the JV football team.
He was very involved in his church on their dance squad,
this Greek Orthodox church.
He was going to water parks with friends.
That's not going to work, Dr friends that's not gonna work dr. Bethany
absolutely not I mean when you he really wore what we call in my field the mask
of sanity meaning that he knew how to move and operate in society as if he is
a normal empathetic person when in fact he's not but that doesn't mean he's
insane you can't be schizophrenic or bipolar or have any kind of psychiatric disorder
and be as collected and methodical as he was.
And, you know, I want to speak to the laughing in the park,
the water park the day before and how he seemed so friendly and engaged.
He was in a state of relief because he knew he was going to do this. One of the things
we know about something called catathonic homicide is that while the person is methodically planning
the crime, they feel a great sense of relief and excitement because they're finally going to do it.
And that phase lasts after the commission of the crime up to six to nine
months. So they'll come to court, maybe they'll, you know, feign solemnity or to kind of look quiet,
but usually they're quite relieved that they were able to do it because they are in a state of
paranoid distress. They feel that the world has wronged them. And that feeling is unbearable to them at a pathological level you and I cannot understand.
And once they have straightened everybody out, oh, they are so, so happy and so relieved.
So no wonder they joke the day before and the day after.
That's just a sign of how disturbed they are.
Well, I want you to listen. In the last hours, you mentioned court.
The Santa Fe, Texas school shooter who claimed he didn't have the courage to go through with this plan to kill himself
after he killed 10 others, including a hero teacher.
He makes his first court appearance.
Listen.
And you have been charged with aggravated assault against a public servant. I'm denying your bond on both charges.
You have the right to obtain counsel. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right
to have an attorney present during interviews with peace officers or attorneys representing
the state. You have the right to terminate that interview at any time. You have the right to
request appointment of counsel if you're indigent and cannot afford it. You have the right to an
examining trial. You are not required to make a statement.
Any statement made by you may be used against you.
Are you a citizen of the United States?
Are you a citizen of the United States?
Yes, sir.
Are you requesting consideration for a court-appointed attorney?
Yes, sir.
Are you out on bond for any other charge?
No, sir.
I'm going to ask you to sign the front page,
which is just acknowledging that I read you your rights this afternoon.
You're not entering a plea today.
Thanks.
I'm going to have you sign a second time requesting consideration
to be appointed a court-appointed attorney
and a third time saying that you'll keep your appointments and tell us if you change your address or phone number.
One more time right here, please, saying that you're requesting that court-appointed attorney.
Do you want to open the application now or then wait?
No, we're doing it with you.
Judge.
I'm sorry?
To the next window.
To the next window. Oh, to the next window.
If I need to do it over again?
Do I need to do it over again?
You're fine.
You're fine.
All right.
Do you have any questions?
All right.
When you're finished, they're going to work on the application a little bit later.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you. The massacre that unfolded early Friday morning at a Santa Fe high school ended up gunning
down eight students and two teachers.
Listen to this, the shooting was the 101st mass
shooting overall
in 2018
alone.
I mean, is that
statistic correct?
David Katz, former GEA active
shooter expert, 101
already?
And we're only in month
five?
Well, I think that you have to look at what they're defining, you know, the mass
shooting as.
You have to, you would exclude, for example, murder-suicide.
I mean, that number seems enormously high only because the FBI study that covered those incidents between the years 2000 and 2013,
there were only 160 incidents that were defined as active shooter incidents in that whole period.
So the frequency is definitely going up.
There's no doubt about that.
But this is the new reality.
Whether those numbers are accurate or not, they're going to be increasing.
And it seems to be something endemic in our society because if you look,
you know, I mean, the firearms have been available, you know,
throughout my lifetime, the AR-15 rifle, by the way,
not used in this case, but that's been available since the late 1950s.
What is it that's driving people now to act in these horrifically violent
manners that didn't before.
I'm assuming that people had psychological issues throughout their lives,
but we have something going on in our society that I can't even begin to understand.
I agree with you, David Katz, and I have some ideas about what the problem is.
Who are the victims in this case?
We have eight students and two substitute
teachers, teachers that happen to be called in. Man, you happen to get called in the day
of a school shooting. First of all, teen girl Sabika Sikh, aistani exchange student part of the yes program for scholarships to high school countries
populations that are majority muslim she was set to come home in just a few weeks
chris stone a junior if you could see the picture of him in his tuxedo, standing beside an old tractor,
it just breaks my heart.
His face, his big smile on it, a junior.
His family had been searching local hospitals for him shortly after the shooting on Friday.
Just the most beautiful boy.
Ann Perkins, the substitute teacher at Santa Fe High.
She was a local gymnastics club where her daughter is a member.
Posted the announcement on its Facebook page on Friday.
And I'm looking at the photos of her.
She was beloved.
Just beautiful.
Had children, grandchildren, loved students, loved traveling, love and family.
And she said she liked a sip of champagne every once in a while.
Oh, she looks like she's so happy.
Angelique Ramirez, got a picture of her with like a daisy in her hair.
Oh, gosh, she's so pretty, this teen girl, Angelique.
Cynthia Tisdale, also a substitute teacher.
I'm looking at her photo, standing arm in arm.
Oh, my goodness, it looks like with her husband.
Erin Kyle McLeod, a student at Santa Fe High.
I'm looking at him.
Looks like he's out driving a car for the first time in this photo.
Kimberly Jessica Vaughn.
She's pictured here, it looks like with her mom, kind of hiding behind her mom.
She's wearing glasses and has a ponytail and kind of a shy smile on her face her mother initially read online she was having
trouble finding her daughter then later it was confirmed her daughter kimberly jessica was dead
jared connor black just, a student at Santa Fe.
I'm looking at his photo.
It's just the whole world in front of him. Here's Shanna Fisher, the little girl that the gunman had fallen for and she rejected him.
Christian Riley Garcia.
He's standing in his photo at a construction site and he is written on one of the boards.
Psalm 4610, he says, Be still and know that I am God.
He's standing beside that.
Christian Riley Garcia.
Oh gosh.
The list is heartbreaking. Right now we are praying for the victims and
their families as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace Crime Story signing off. Goodbye friend.
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