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Suspect identified as 15-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis on Twitter
Michigan school shooting: Superintendent says suspect was called to office but ‘no discipline was warranted’
A 15-year-old student suspected of killing 10 people at a Texas school has been “counselled” for a social media post in Michigan, local media reported on Monday, while authorities in the state said he had been in a disciplinary process but “no discipline was warranted”.
Students at Santa Fe high school are consoled by police Read more
The Texas town of Santa Fe that was “touched so deeply” by a high school massacre on Friday was still reeling, authorities said, after the suspect, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a student at the high school, was formally charged with capital murder.
Weeks before Pagourtzis was apprehended, the suspect had posted threats of violence in his writings, Kurt Aden, the superintendent of Santa Fe Independent School District, told reporters.
“We don’t know where those posts came from,” Aden said. “There were kids who were taking pictures of the threats and then there were kids who started calling police.”
Aden said the threats resulted in a preliminary investigation in September, and that the suspect was “counselled, on one hand”, and that there was no further school threat.
The final investigation, last week, found “no discipline was warranted”, Aden said. But, he added, “if there was a threat in his mind, we can always have that back in a conversation with law enforcement or with our legal team.”
“If any students felt there was a threat against them, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure they’re safe,” Aden said.
Pagourtzis was in custody without bond after he was charged with capital murder and capital murder of multiple people in Friday’s mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in which eight students and two staff were killed, officials said.
“We obviously still have the loss of 10 lives,” the Santa Fe Independent School District police chief Walter Braun said.
The Texas student who stormed Santa Fe high school with a shotgun and revolver was identified on Twitter as Pagourtzis by an acquaintance who wrote he was a “good kid”.
On his Twitter account, a user with the name Iraan offered “love and forgiveness” to the suspect.
“Good kid and been to school with him,” Iraan wrote, identifying himself by first name only.
He also posted in a reply that he had been in a psychological treatment facility in the past, prompting a flurry of responses from users.