Like some of her classmates, senior Brooke Williams had mixed emotions about returning Tuesday to classes at Santa Fe High School, where a student fatally shot 10 people in the nation's deadliest school attack since the massacre in Parkland, Florida.
Santa Fe High School supporters gather by the school to wish student and staff well on their first day of classes after a shooting that killed 10 people. Tuesday, May 29, 2018 in Santa Fe. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle)
"I'm not excited to go back to school. I'm actually pretty scared to, but I feel like that's the reason why I need to go back. I don't want to be scared of this the rest of my life," Williams said.
Less than two weeks after the shooting, students at the school near Houston were greeted by more than 20 law enforcement vehicles and supporters holding signs saying "Santa Fe Strong" and "United We Stand."
Students who had classes in the area of the shooting were the first allowed back in, followed by the rest about two hours later. The teens lined up in front of the school's main entrance, which was the only approved entrance. They were not allowed to carry backpacks or large purses and were required to show an ID before entering.
All students then gathered for a two-hour assembly honoring the victims, and counselors were available for anyone who needed to talk about the May 18 slayings of eight students and two substitute teachers.
Andi Lewis, director of the Kingwood High School Fillies dance team brought team members to Santa Fe in support of Santa Fe High School students who were returning to the school for their first day of classes after a shooting that killed 10 people. Tuesday, May 29, 2018 in Santa Fe. ( Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott visited the campus Tuesday, speaking with students, parents, teachers and staff privately and presenting first responders with an award for their actions.
Hailey Hubbard, another senior, was returning for her final week of high school.
"Honestly, I just want to go back so I can see my friends and not spend my last three days of senior year just being secluded in a room," Hubbard said. She said she did not want the shooting to be her last memory of high school.
Hubbard said some of her friends were more ambivalent about returning to campus and that she had to help calm down a friend who suffered a panic attack at the thought of going back to school.
She hopes returning to campus will also give her mother peace of mind because "she's terrified of me going to school." The teen had wanted to go to campus on the school bus that she normally takes. But her mother said no because there's no security on the bus.
Santa Fe High School students return to school, Tuesday, May 29, 2018, 11 days after a shooter killed 10 people, in Sata Fe, Texas. (Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle via AP
Sheila Hubbard wasn't reassured by the extra security at the school and planned to stay on campus all day Tuesday to make sure her daughter and son Nathan, also a senior, were both safe.
"I think them going back is best. It doesn't make it easier for the parents ... We're all scared our kids are going to come to harm," the elder Hubbard, a 40-year-old nurse, said as she stood outside her home just before driving her kids to school.
Williams said some other seniors she spoke with won't return to campus and plan to show up only for graduation on Friday "because they're so terrified."
She wanted to return to class in part so the shooting would not be her defining memory of her school.
"I hope by the end of the day today I'll be able to look at the school and not cry, not feel hate ... not think of it in grief ... and also to find comfort in the people who are still here," she said.
Authorities have charged Dimitrios Pagourtzis with capital murder in the attack. He's accused of using a shotgun and pistol that belonged to his father. The 17-year-old remained jailed without bond in Galveston.
Also Tuesday, the hospital treating a school police officer who was badly wounded in the attack announced that his condition had been upgraded from critical to serious.
Officer John Barnes was shot in the arm when he confronted the gunman. A bullet damaged the bone and a major blood vessel around his elbow. He remains in the intensive care unit.
Abbott planned to announce a school-safety plan on Wednesday after holding three days of meetings last week following the shooting.
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — An Army reservist and friend of the gunman behind Maine’s deadliest mass shooting testified Thursday about his friend's mental decline, describing publicly for the first time the warning he issued a month before the tragedy unfolded.
Sean Hodgson texted leaders of his reserve unit six weeks before the shooting that left 18 people dead and 13 wounded, telling them to change the passcode to the gate at their Army Reserve training facility and arm themselves if Robert Card showed up.
Hodgson told a panel investigating the mass shooting on Thursday that he issued the warning to superiors after Card’s delusional and violent behavior spiraled and ended with Card punching him in the face.
“I said ‘Just so you know, I love you. I’ll always be there for you. I won’t give up on you.’ He had that blank stare on his face. It was a dead stare and he drove away,” Hodgson recounted as his friend left him at a gas station.
The attacks happened six months ago on Oct. 25 when Card opened fire at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, two locations where he held a delusional belief that people were talking about him behind his back. Two days later, the 40-year-old Reservist was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hodgson told superiors on Sept. 15: “I believe he’s going to snap and do a mass shooting.”
But it wasn't just Hodgson who was worried about Card. Several other reservists witnessed his deterioration during training last summer. That led to a two-week hospitalization in July for Card, months after relatives warned police he had grown paranoid and that they were concerned about his access to guns.
The failure of authorities to remove Card’s weapons in the weeks before the shooting has become the subject of a monthslong investigation in the state, which also has passed new gun safety laws since the tragedy.
In an interim report released last month, an independent commission launched by Gov. Janet Mills concluded that the Sagadahoc County sheriff’s office had probable cause under Maine’s “yellow flag” law to take Card into custody and seize his guns. It also criticized police for not following up with Hodgson about his warning text. A final report is expected this summer.
On Thursday, Hodgson said he warned of a mass shooting because Card threatened multiple members of the unit with violence and that his threats and delusions were escalating. And he had access to guns.
“The way he was behaving was very threatening. It was escalating. The totality of the circumstances, the events leading to that moment, I was pretty convinced he was going to cause harm,” he said.
Another reservist, Daryl Reed, testified he witnessed Card’s mental and physical decline firsthand, seeing a “normal guy” who successfully traded stocks and loved hunting and the outdoors become increasingly paranoid and believing others were calling him a pedophile.
Card also acquired a thermal scope with a laser range finder that he said cost $10,000, and he demonstrated how it could be used to detect animals, including at night, Reed said.
He added fellow reservists started to become concerned Card could become a danger to colleagues. They were surprised, several testified, when Card was released from a psychiatric hospital after only two weeks.
In an exclusive series of interviews in January, Hodgson told The Associated Press he met Card in the Army Reserve in 2006 and that they became close friends after both divorced their spouses around the same time. They lived together for about a month in 2022, and when Card was hospitalized in New York in July, Hodgson drove him back to Maine.
Growing increasingly worried about his friend’s mental health, Hodgson warned authorities after Card started “flipping out” after a night of gambling, pounding the steering wheel and nearly crashing multiple times. After ignoring his pleas to pull over, Card punched him in the face, Hodgson said.
“It took me a lot to report somebody I love,” he said. “But when the hair starts standing up on the back of your neck, you have to listen.”
Some officials downplayed Hodgson’s warning, suggesting he might have been drunk because of the late hour of his text. Army Reserve Capt. Jeremy Reamer, the commanding officer of the reserve unit, described him as “not the most credible of our soldiers” and said his message should be taken “with a grain of salt.”
Hodgson said he struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol addiction but said he wasn’t drinking that night and was awake because he works nights and was waiting for his boss to call. “I grieve every day for the many lives that are lost for no reason and those that are still affected today,” he told the AP earlier this month.
Cara Cookson, director of victim services for the Maine Office of the Attorney General, also testified Thursday and described through tears the daunting task of responding to the enormity of the tragedy with a “patchwork of resources.”
On Thursday evening, the Maine Resiliency Center, which provides support to people affected by the killings, held a six-month commemoration event that drew several hundred people to a park in Lewiston.
The names of the 18 people who died were read aloud at the start of the ceremony, and there were 18 empty chairs, each with a candle and a blue heart, honoring the victims.
The governor also acknowledged the anniversary. “Our hearts are still healing, and the road to healing is long, but we will continue to walk it together,” Mills said in a statement.
Ed Yurek, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, gives testimony, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Sean Hodgson, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, gives testimony, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Sean Hodgson, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, gives testimony, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Sean Hodgson, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, shows where he was punched by Robert Card while giving testimony, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Daniel Wathen listens to testimony, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Dr. Anthony Ng questions a witness, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Toby Dilworth questions a witness, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Dr. Debra Baeder questions a witness, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Ellen Gorman questions a witness, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Sean Hodgson, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, wipes tears while recalling the moment he heard about the mass shooting, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Daryl Reed, a member of the U.S. Army Reserves, is sworn in before giving testimony Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
FILE - This photo released by the Lewiston, Maine, Police Department shows Robert Card, who was responsible for the mass shootings in Lewiston, Maine, on Oct. 25, 2023. Sean Hodgson, a fellow U.S. Army reservist who sounded the clearest warning ahead of Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, is expected to answer questions Thursday, April 25, 2024, from the commission investigating the tragedy. (Lewiston Police Department via AP, File)
Sean Hodgson waits to be called to give testimony, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Augusta, Maine, during a hearing of the independent commission investigating the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. Hodgson had alerted an Army supervisor in September that his friend, Robert Card, was capable to doing a mass shooting. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
