Santa Fe Shooter Killed Classmate After She Rejected Him, Victim's Mother Says [UPDATED]

While investigators are still trying to determine the motive behind Dimitrios Pagourtzis’s rampage that killed 10 people and 13 others at Santa Fe High, the mother of one of the victims alleges that Pagourtzis may have targeted Shana Fisher and her class after she publicly rejected his advances.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

One of Pagourtzis’ classmates who died in the attack, Shana Fisher, “had 4 months of problems from this boy,” her mother, Sadie Rodriguez, wrote in a private message to the Los Angeles Times on Facebook. “He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no.”Pagourtzis continued to get more aggressive, and she finally stood up to him and embarrassed him in class, Rodriguez said. “A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like,” she wrote. “Shana being the first one.” Rodriguez didn’t say how she knew her daughter was the first victim.

Fisher’s friends were not able to confirm Rodriguez’s claims; while it is unverified, it does, unfortunately, fit with a broader link between mass shooters and violence against women, including the 2014 Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger and the recent Toronto van attack by Alek Minassian, both misogynists who believed women owe them sex. In March, 17-year-old Austin Rollins shot and killed his ex-girlfriend Jaelynn Willey at a Maryland high school after she broke up with him.

But misogyny is not a door or a video game, so most legislators never talk about its connection to gun violence.

Update 5/21, 3:38 pm: Pagourtzis’s attorney Nicholas Poehl addressed the claim with by saying the accused shooter didn’t “recognize the name Shana Fisher.”

NBC News reports:

“There’s a lot of rumors out there right now,” Poehl said after he and co-counsel Robert Barfield visited the 17-year-old suspect in Galveston County Jail. “I will say that my client did not recognize the name Shana Fisher.”

Asked about a possible motive, Poehl said they’re still no closer to understanding what sparked the deadly mayhem on Friday that stunned the state of Texas. He said his client remains disoriented and is “still in a state.”