In a scene not new, where the United States has witnessed several bloody school murders in recent years shocking public opinion, a 16-year-old student opened fire on his comrades at his high school stadium in northern Los Angeles on Thursday, killing two of them and injuring three others.
These recurring incidents puzzled police and investigators to seek an understanding of why students are doing these acts. Are they indiscriminate, psychological, ideological or other?
“We know the attack was deliberate, but we don’t know the details or the motive at this point,” Alex Villanueva, the Los Angeles Sheriff, told a news conference. “As far as we know, he (the shooter) chose his targets at random. We can identify any relationship between the suspect and the victims. “
Villanueva also confirmed that the shooting killed two people, a 16-year-old high school student, and a 14-year-old boy, both of whom died from their injuries after being taken to hospital in “critical condition.”
The young man, Nathaniel Berhao, shot his head after he attacked his comrades on his 16th birthday. He was taken to hospital and was still “in critical condition” on Friday before his death was announced shortly after 15:30 (23.30 GMT). He left no message to explain his actions, and there is no indication that he had ideological motives.
As for psychological motives, the shooter does not appear to be a victim of bullying at school, according to Villanueva.
No precedents
A neighbor of the shooter said that he had friends. “There were people coming looking for him, or taking him home, and I saw him doing a lot of sports activities.”
The gunman had no precedents, but his father, who divorced his mother a few years ago, had alcohol-related problems and was suspected to have been abusing his wife once, but never tried for lack of evidence.
Details of the incident
The tragedy took place in Santa Clarita, California, at a time when the Senate was debating in Washington the possibility of firearm restrictions.
Police received a call to help at 07:38 local time, while a number of students had joined their classes, while others were still coming to school.
Kent Wegner, from the Sheriff’s office in Los Angeles, told a news conference that the police went to the scene two minutes after it happened and found “people with gunshot wounds, all secondary students.”
For more than an hour, security forces searched the shooter in the surrounding residential area and the hills near the school, believing that he had fled.
But police saw pictures of surveillance cameras “clearly showing the suspect in the yard pulling a pistol out of his bag and shooting five people, then shooting his head,” Wegner said, adding that the weapon, a semi-automatic pistol, was found empty. That no second suspect is required.