Teens watch classmates die on morning of chaos as shooter opens fire at Santa Fe school

A girl closes her eyes and says prayer during a candlelight vigil for victims and survivors of the Santa Fe High School shooting at Texas First Bank on Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe. Hundreds participated and Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz also spoke at the vigil. less A girl closes her eyes and says prayer during a candlelight vigil for victims and survivors of the Santa Fe High School shooting at Texas First Bank on Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe. Hundreds participated ... more Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 62 Caption Close Teens watch classmates die on morning of chaos as shooter opens fire at Santa Fe school 1 / 62 Back to Gallery

SANTA FE – Seventeen-year-old Trey Lemley was one week past prom, two weeks from the end of his junior year.

He was surrounded by safe, familiar things. The long tables of the Santa Fe High School art lab.

The walls covered in murals and paintings. The friends who had made them.

Then, one of his classmates, clad in a trenchcoat, entered the room with a shotgun and a revolver.

Trey dropped his phone, flung himself inside a closet and barricaded the door, according to his sister, Courtney Lemley.

When Trey came out, three bodies lay on the floor in pools of blood.

When Trey came out, the old, safe Santa Fe High School was gone.

When Trey came out, he and his district of more than 4,000 students, about 30 miles south of Houston, had joined a growing cadre of U.S. communities with children who will never come home, racked by a mass shooting and represented by political leaders who have no clear consensus on how to stop them.

About 7:30 a.m. Friday, 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis killed 10 and injured at least 10 more before a Santa Fe school police officer and a Texas state trooper intercepted him. He eventually emerged from the art class and surrendered, according to an arrest affidavit.

The school officer, 49-year-old John Barnes, suffered a gunshot to the upper arm, critically wounding him with severe blood loss. The dead included students and an educator.

School shootings since Columbine To read more about each incident, click the dot. Larger dots are incidents where there were more casualties Source: Washington Post school shootings data | Graphic by Jordan Rubio

Police also detained two people of interest in the case, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news briefing Friday at the school. One was at the scene and had "suspicious reactions" after the shootings, and officials were unsure whether that person was involved in the attack, Abbott said. The other was being interviewed. Abbott gave no other details about them.

Pagourtzis claimed to have acted alone and was cooperating with authorities, said Galveston County Judge Mark Henry, the county's top elected official.

Authorities said Pagourtzis deployed inoperable explosive devices, perhaps to stoke fear. They were checking for more devices in Pagourtzis' vehicle and home, about three miles northwest of the school, Abbott said.

The dead include students Angelique Ramirez, 15, and Jared Black; and Cynthia Tisdale, a teacher's aide in the art class, according to their family members.

Among the injured were Rome Shubert, 16, a member of the school's baseball team who was treated and released after being grazed on the back of the head; student Clayton Horn, shot in the arm and leg; and sophomore Trenton Beazley, one of Shubert's baseball teammates, who was struck in the back by bullet fragments.

It was the worst mass shooting in America since Valentine's Day, when 17 people died at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and perhaps the worst school shooting in Texas since Charles Whitman killed 17 in a rampage from his perch in a University of Texas tower in 1966. There have been 16 school shootings nationwide in 2018, according to a database maintained by the Washington Post.

The shooting set off another enactment of the nation's familiar scenes of school terror: Students watching classmates die. Fleeing, their belongings searched by armed officers. Parents, tortured by lack of information, flocking to the school and hospitals. Desperate pleas for word of the missing on social media.

Blake Wingate, 16, and Kane Hopkins, 15, were getting ready to leave their first-period class near one of the school's three gyms when they heard fire alarms blare. They moved toward a hallway.

Three gunshots. Inches away, a window shattered. A teacher screamed for students to run.

The teens tried to run back to the gym. The door was locked. Other students joined as they tried to muscle open doors to the second gym.

Those were locked, too.

They found one unlocked door leading to the third gym and ran across a basketball court and outside to the school's parking lot.

Wingate saw a classmate begging for help, holding a teenager, the body limp. He and Kane kept running, intent on escape.

Eight people crammed into Wingate's two-door Jeep as more students streamed out of the school and across Highway 6.

Wingate drove to Hopkins' house. As they arrived, one friend threw up.

They spent the rest of the day watching news and texting friends in a desperate attempt to learn their classmates' fates.

They still don't know what happened to a friend whose parents tried and failed to find him at local hospitals.

They don't want to go back to school. It doesn't feel safe.

"It keeps replaying in my head," Wingate said. "It's a weird story that will stay in my head for the rest of my life. Just how close I was."

Other students jumped fences and fled to nearby woods or took shelter behind a mechanic's shop across the freeway.

Avari Creekmore, 16, got to school a little late. She heard fire alarms. She saw blood on a hallway floor and heard shooting.

"I took off running. I turned and saw him with whatever he had and I ran," she said, referring to the shooter. "I called my mom and said 'We have an active shooter at school,' and she said, 'I'm on my way.'"

The odor of gunpowder hung in the air.

"I just thought to run away from it," Avari said. "I just thought if he was near me just, God, get out of his sight."

Suzannah Salazar, 17, said she heard what sounded like four pops in the nearby art classroom, then she ran.

Hours after the shooting, she was still waiting to hear what had happened to her 16-year-old sister, Sarah, who she believes was in the room.

"I'm just hoping my sister comes back," she said. "I'm trying to stay as calm as I can."

Freshman Kali Reeves, 15, ran to a convenience store on the highway.

"All I know is, several are dead, a friend of mine was shot," Reeves said. "I know one girl is dead; she took a shot to the head."

Parents rushed to a complex of school district buildings about three miles from the high school, at a landmark known as the Alamo Gym. Some met relief as they found their children there. Others met only frustration.

"You shouldn't have to be waiting three hours to hear where your kid is," said Lesley Tribble, a 29-year-old who said she is the legal guardian of student Angelique Ramirez.

"She's easily identifiable — she has fire-red hair and two lip piercings," Carli Daffern, 14, said of Ramirez, who she said is her best friend and neighbor.

"None of us can get any real intel," Tribble wrote in a text message. "We've been calling hospitals asking because we still can't get any names or anything ... (Authorities are) trying to keep people calm but names aren't being released and now certain parents are getting riled up."

Leia Olinde, a local business owner, came to look for her aunt, Tisdale, but acknowledged she was growing more concerned.

"If everything was fine and she was OK she would have found a way to contact her husband by now," she said.

Community members and officers escorted families out of the facility by early Friday evening. Some walked briskly, heads down. Others, sobbing, needed guidance, a supportive hand on an arm. One woman pulled her T-shirt up to cover her face.

Officers blocked traffic. Friends or family had cars waiting. The community had seemed to reach a silent agreement that, at the very least, they could help the families leave this place, saturated with 10 solid hours of stress and uncertainty, quickly.

Tribble stayed. Just before 6 p.m., she learned Ramirez died.

Pagourtzis appeared in the evening before Henry, the county judge, who arraigned him on charges of capital murder and aggravated assault on a public servant. Henry denied bond. Pagourtzis made a quick appearance and stayed mostly silent. He asked for a court-appointed lawyer.

Investigators found carbon dioxide canisters wrapped with duct tape but no detonators, and a pressure cooker with an alarm clock and nails, but no explosive, Henry said. They also discovered an unspent Molotov cocktail — a bottle filled with flammable liquid.

"I think he wanted people to think they were explosives, but they were not," Henry said, adding authorities have no reports of explosions during the shooting.

Still, investigators took their time searching Pagourtzis' vehicle and house, several miles from the high school on Highway 6.

Pagourtzis used guns owned by his father, Abbott said, and did not have a legal right to possess them.

"I have no information ... whether the father knows the weapons were taken," he said.

No clear motive emerged, but Abbott said the teen revealed in journals that he had planned to kill himself after the attack.

"He didn't have the courage to end his life," Abbott said.

The student's social media persona included a photo of a "BORN TO KILL" T-shirt, German nationalist symbols and indications of an affinity for guns.

He also participated in a Greek Orthodox dance team, according to a church website.

Hopkins and Wingate, who fled the school in the Jeep, said they knew Pagourtzis from the football team and welding classes.

"He always wore dark clothes and that trench coat," Wingate said. "He would go outside and sit in a corner. The teacher always had to go out to find him."

A woman who answered the phone at a number associated with the Pagourtzis family declined to speak with The Associated Press.

"Give us our time right now, thank you," she said.

In the arrest affidavit, officers said Pagourtzis told them he avoided shooting students he liked, "so he could have his story told."

REACTION: 'Yall been sending thoughts and prayers for two decades now'

The high school's Earl Routh Field House turned into a command post for law enforcement. They established a mass casualty unit, and a makeshift morgue. Bodies remained inside the school into the evening.

Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center put out a call for donations, especially for type O negative.

Leaders across the political spectrum condemned the violence. Abbott, a Republican, said he planned to convene a roundtable on school shootings to hear from victims as well as proponents of gun rights.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican from Houston, said a response should be focused on access to schools and retrofitting schools to prevent attacks. He said gun owners should lock them up to keep them safe.

Democratic State Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, however, tweeted: "Y'all been sending thoughts and prayers for two freaking decades now. Time to try something new."

President Donald J. Trump in February promised to stand up to the National Rifle Association to impose new gun restrictions, before telling the NRA in May that the Second Amendment would "never ever be under siege as long as I am your president."

On Friday, Trump emphasized keeping guns away from people who shouldn't have them.

"This has been going on too long in our country. Too many years. Too many decades now," he said. "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. My administration is determined to do everything in our power to protect our students, secure our schools and keep weapons out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves and to others."

Former Astronaut Mark Kelly, who lived in the area of Santa Fe, near Johnson Space Center, for 15 years, said he and his wife, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords were devastated. Giffords was injured in a shooting at an event in her Arizona district in 2011.

"It is our moral obligation to protect the vulnerable," Kelly wrote on social media. "The adults, the politicians, are responsible for the safety of children."

Santa Fe had an active shooter drill in February, junior Brittany Hale said. It then went on lockdown Feb. 28, 14 days after Parkland, after a threat was reported, junior Jacob Smirkik said. Though school was in session the next day, he said few attended.

"This time," he said, "there was no warning."

On Thursday, David Hogg, a Parkland student, had a chilling premonition as he spoke to reporters at an event in Los Angeles.

"There is someone alive right now that will not be alive at this time tomorrow and has never even thought about gun violence," he said, "but everyone around them will have to for the rest of their lives."

Minutes after the Santa Fe shooting, it was becoming clear that the schools would forever be linked.

"Santa Fe High, you didn't deserve this," tweeted Emma González, an outspoken Parkland survivor. "You deserve peace all your lives, not just after a tombstone saying that is put over you. You deserve more than Thoughts and Prayers, and after supporting us by walking out, we will be there to support you by raising up your voices."

Santa Fe students walked out just last month in support of the national protests against gun violence in schools.

In one photo that surfaced again Friday, a group of those walking out held up a poster.

Someone had scrawled on it in black marker: "Santa Fe High School says #NeverAgain."

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Reporters Todd Ackerman, Gabrielle Banks, St. John Barned-Smith, Keri Blakinger, Dug Begley, Jacob Carpenter, Susan Carroll, Jenny Deam, Matt Dempsey, Kevin Diaz, Robert Downen, Collin Eaton, Lindsay Ellis, Emily Foxhall, Jose Gonzalez, Maggie Gordon, David Hunn, Samantha Ketterer, Jaimy Jones, Lomi Kriel, Brooke Lewis, Mike Morris, Ileana Najarro, Nick Powell, Monica Rhor, Kirk Sides, Mike Snyder, Alex Stuckey, Paul Takahashi and Mike Ward contributed to this report.