As I'm sure all of you know, there was another high school shooting.
This one occurred in Saugus, CA, which is about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. It's part of the Santa Clarita Valley, near Newhall, Valencia, and Canyon Country. I actually spent a good deal of time in the area about 25-30 years ago.
I just found out today that the sister of my childhood best friend lives in Saugus, and her son was 10 feet away when the shooting began. The boy saw the gun out, and watched as other students got shot. He ran away and actually tried to keep his backpack facing where the shooter was standing "to block the bullets". Fortunately the shooter didn't fire at him, and he got away. And fortunately for his mom, she got a text from him that he got away before she was aware there was a shooting. His uncle (my friend) told me that the boy is surprisingly calm about the whole thing.
The shooter, Nathaniel Berhow, decided to do this on his 16th birthday, for unknown reasons. He was half-Asian, with a white dad and an Asian mom. He was known as a smart, quiet kid, who was not bullied, and he had a girlfriend. However, his dad abruptly died of a heart attack in 2017, which seemed to have sent him spiraling into depression.
Some sicko also set up a fake Instagram account shortly after the shooting, pretending to belong to the shooter. The account had the tag, "Saugus have fun at school tomorrow", and for awhile the account was assumed to be real. Later it came out that the account was a hoax, and that some kid had set it up to "troll" and to get onto the news.
Two kids died there, and a few others are injured. The shooter shot himself in the head at the end, causing himself to become braindead, but he's being left on life support so his organs can be used for others.
The motive is not known, but it's said that a "dispute with a girl at the school" might have been the reason for the shooting. However, I think there's a good chance he wouldn't have done this if his dad were still alive. That seemed to be the factor which screwed him up. His father was 41 years older than him, and died at age 55.