According to the mother of one of the victims of the Santa Fe shooting this week, the alleged gunman in the attack killed her daughter after she rejected multiple unwelcome advances from him. Sadie Rodriguez, the mother of Santa Fe High School student Shana Fisher, told the Los Angeles Times that her daughter had been having problems with the suspected gunman’s behavior toward her for months, and she ultimately stood up to him during a class they had together.
A week later, Rodriguez said, he committed the deadly mass shooting, killing her daughter first.
“He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no,” Rodriguez reportedly told the Times in a Facebook message. “A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like, Shana being the first one.”
The mother of one of the victims of the Santa Fe school shooting said her daughter recently rejected the romantic advances of the accused gunman: https://t.co/CrKGi8R3Ei pic.twitter.com/6pbxI9wORA
— Austin Statesman (@statesman) May 20, 2018
Rodriguez’s statements to the Times echo reports that the suspected gunman taunted and mocked students during the shooting. A 17-year-old student at the school, he was apprehended by authorities after fatally shooting 10 people and injuring several more, including an armed officer tasked with guarding the school.
He faced a court hearing on Friday night, just hours after the massacre, and has been charged with capital murder, although as a minor he likely cannot face the death penalty.
The detail Rodriguez told the Times, about her daughter having rejected the alleged shooter, is evocative of another recent incident of deadly violence in Canada. Late last month, a self-proclaimed “incel”―short for “involuntary celibate,” a highly insular, misogynist men’s movement―plowed a van into a crowd of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people, most of them women.
NEW: The Santa Fe High School gunman killed a classmate, Shana Fisher, who had turned down his advances, her mother tells us. Shana finally stood up to him and embarrassed him in class, and "a week later he opens fire on everyone he didn't like." https://t.co/clHL0gO6zP
— Matt Pearce 🦅🇺🇸 (@mattdpearce) May 20, 2018
Of the 10 people killed at Santa Fe, eight were students and two were teachers. The students were Angelique Ramirez, Sabika Sheikh, Christian Riley Garcia, Kimberly Vaughan, Christopher Jake Stone, Jared Black, Aaron Kyle McLeod, and Rodriguez’s daughter, Shana Fisher. The two teachers who were killed were Cynthia Tisdale and Glenda Perkins.