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Texas school shooting: Student tells media 'I wasn’t surprised, I was just scared'

'It’s been happening everywhere,' 17-year-old says of school shootings

Emily Shugerman
New York
Friday 18 May 2018 19:16 BST
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Santa Fe High School student Paige Curry says she wasn't surprised by the shooting
Santa Fe High School student Paige Curry says she wasn't surprised by the shooting (ABC News)

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At least one student at the Texas high school that became the scene of a mass shooting on Friday has said she wasn't surprised. She’s been expecting this.

“It’s been happening everywhere,” 17-year-old student Paige Curry said in an interview hours after the shooting. “I’ve always kind of felt it like eventually it was going to happen here too.”

She added: “I wasn’t surprised, I was just scared.”

Paige told ABC News that she was three classrooms away from where the Santa Fe High School gunman opened fire that morning, killing at least eight people. At first she didn’t know what the loud booming sounds were, she said – until she heard the screams.

“I got up and I ran, and we went onto the stage and we hid backstage,” she said. “Then the alarm started going off, and we hid back there for a while until the [SWAT team] found us.”

“It was really, really scary,” she added.

Law enforcement sources said as many as 10 people may have been killed in the shooting at Santa Fe High School, located some 40 miles south of Houston. Two suspects are in police custody. Both are believed to be students at the school.

The Santa Fe incident was the 22nd school shooting this year in which someone has been killed or injured, according to a CNN count. It came just over three months after a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff members were killed.

The Parkland shooting set off renewed calls for gun control reform, but many of the survivors feel their demands have yet to be met.

“Get ready for two weeks of media coverage of politicians acting like they give a s*** when in reality they just want to boost their approval ratings before midterms,” Parkland student David Hogg tweeted.

Explosive devices found in Santa Fe high school and surrounding areas following shooting

Several of Paige’s fellow students said they assumed the alarms were part of a routine fire drill. They walked calmly outside into a grassy area, until they heard the gunshots behind them.

“The next thing you know everyone looks and you just hear ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’” student Dakota Shrader told CBS News. “I just ran as fast as I could to the nearest forest to hide and call my mom.”

She added: “I shouldn’t be going through this at my school. This is my daily life. I shouldn’t be feeling like that.”

Another student told KTRK-TV he went as far as to jump a stranger's fence and run into a nearby car wash to evade the gunshots. When he sat down to catch his breath, he noticed a girl who had been shot in the knee.

At least 12 people were transported to local hospitals with injuries, according to officials. The majority of the victims were students. Also injured was a local police officer, who Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said engaged with the shooter before being injured.

President Donald Trump called the shooting "absolutely horrific" in comments on Friday.

"We are with you and we will be with you forever,” he said to survivors and victims of the massacre. “...Everyone must work together at every level of government to keep our children safe.”

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