One of victims in Texas school shooting had spurned alleged gunman
Mum of one of the victims says daughter had spurned gunman's advances
SANTA FE, TEXAS The teenage boy who shot and killed eight students and two teachers in Texas had been spurned by one of his victims after making aggressive advances, her mother told the Los Angeles Times.
Ms Sadie Rodriguez, the mother of Shana Fisher, 16, told the newspaper that her daughter had rejected four months of aggressive advances from accused shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, at the Santa Fe High School.
Miss Fisher finally stood up in class and told him that she would not go out with him, the newspaper quoted her mother as saying.
"A week later, he opens fire on everyone he didn't like," she said. "Shana being the first ."
Ms Rodriguez could not be reached for comment.
If true, it would be the second school shooting in recent months driven by such rejection.
In March, a 17-year-old Maryland high school student used his father's gun to shoot and seriously wound a female student with whom he had been in a recently ended relationship, police said.
As the investigation entered its third day yesterday, no official motive had been announced for the massacre, the fourth-deadliest mass shooting at a US public school in modern history.
Classmates at Santa Fe High School, with 1,460 students, described the accused shooter as a loner who was on the school's football team.
He wore a black trench coat to school in the Texas heat on Friday and opened fire with a pistol and shotgun.
Multiple news accounts said Pagourtzis taunted his victims as he fired, focusing mostly on the arts class room where Miss Fisher was.
Texas governor Jim Abbott told reporters that Pagourtzis obtained firearms from his father, who had likely acquired them legally.
In addition to 10 deaths, the gunman wounded at least 13 people, with two of them in critical condition. One of those in critical condition was one of the two school resource officers who engaged the shooter before his surrender.
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