By Stephen Brown: @SteveBTech is a Technology Entrepreneur, Programmer, & CES Judge. Along with being the founder of DigitalAfro.com, he is the founder of DigiLyfe Magazine , Nubby.co, & StemStars.org an organization that teaches K-12 Students Science & Technology.
Experts say that there are always tell tale signs before a killer commits the unthinkable, and Dimitrios Pagourtzis was no different. “Born to kill” was the disturbing message on a T-shirt that appeared on Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, Facebook Page whom authorities identified Friday as the suspect in an attack on Santa Fe High School in Texas.
At least 10 people are dead. Mr. Pagourtzis, a student at the school, was in police custody.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said the suspect’s Facebook page, along with a journal that he prepared outlining plans for a shooting, may prove to be important clues for investigators.
“That would be maybe the only, if not the foremost, warning sign,” the governor said of the social media posts. “But as far as investigations by law enforcement agencies, as far as arrests or confrontation with law enforcement, as far as having a criminal history, he has none. His slate is pretty clean. There simply were not the same type of warning signs that we’ve seen in so many other shootings.”
Here’s more of what we know:
• The governor said he used a shotgun and a .38 revolver, and both weapons appeared to have been obtained from the suspect’s father, who legally owned them.
• Investigators are still determining a motive, but the social media trail Mr. Pagourtzis left in his wake shows a young man obsessed with violence. Mr. Abbott said the authorities had not had any previous contact with the gunman that would have alerted them.
“Unlike Parkland, unlike Sutherland Springs, there were not those types of overt warning signs,” Mr. Abbott said, referring to the Florida school attack and a siege at a Texas church in November. “We have what are often categorized as red-flag warnings, and here, the red-flag warnings were either nonexistent or very imperceptible.”
Mr. Pagourtzis made the honor roll in the past, and he was listed on the freshman roster of the Santa Fe High School Indians football team for the 2015-16 season. He was expected to graduate in 2019.
Valerie Martin teaches at the junior high school in Santa Fe, and had Mr. Pagourtzis in her pre-A.P. language arts class last year.
She saw no signs that Mr. Pagourtzis might do such a thing. She viewed him as bright, she said, adding he had taken part in the school’s competition for a national history contest. “He was quiet, but he wasn’t quiet in a creepy way.”
She has her students write in journals, and she said, “He wasn’t drawing weird things in his journal. He wasn’t writing weird things in his journal.”
She has seen such things before, she said. “Those are journals I take to the counselor, and they start watching.”