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'Loner' student shoots and kills 10 at Texas school - UPDATED

UPDATED '>

17 May 2018 23:18 (UTC +04:00)

A 17-year-old student dressed in a trench coat and armed with a shotgun and pistol opened fire at his high school outside Houston on Friday, killing nine students and a teacher, before surrendering to officers, authorities said, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Santa Fe High School, southeast of Houston, joined a long list of U.S. campuses where students and faculty have been killed in a spray of gunfire.

The Texas shooting stoked the nation’s long-running debate over firearms ownership and came about three months after 17 teens and educators were fatally shot in Parkland, Florida.

Students said the gunman, identified by law enforcement as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, opened fire in an art class shortly before 8 a.m. Students and staff fled and a fire alarm triggered a full evacuation.

Classmates described Pagourtzis as a quiet loner who played on the football team. On Friday, they said, he wore the trench coat to school in Santa Fe, about 30 miles (50 km) southeast of Houston, on a day when temperatures topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Pagourtzis obtained firearms from his father, who had likely acquired them legally, and also left behind explosive devices.

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21:26

At least eight people died in a shooting at a Santa Fe, Texas, high school on Friday and police searching the building said they had taken into custody a student suspected of the attack and found explosives in the school building, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The sound of gunshots tore through the air at Santa Fe High School shortly before 8 a.m. CT (1300 GMT) on Friday, witnesses told local media, and live TV images showed lines of students evacuating the building while heavily armed police responded to the scene.

The incident was the latest in a long series of deadly shootings at U.S. schools. Seventeen teens and educators were shot dead at a Parkland, Florida, high school in February, a massacre that stirred the nation’s long-running debate over gun ownership.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said that eight to 10 people, both students and adults, died in the incident at the school about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Houston.

“There is one person, a suspect, in custody and a second possible person of interest that is detained and being questioned,” Gonzalez said at a news conference.