‘It was terrifying’: Students reel from latest US school shooting

Evan San Miguel, a freshman at Santa Fe High School, said he was in his art class early Friday when a fellow student burst in and yelled “Surprise!”

Then the shooting started.

“It was terrifying, terrifying,” Evan recalled hours later. “I didn’t even know if I was going to make it home or not.”

The 15-year-old was among hundreds of students, distraught parents, residents, grief counsellors, and politicians who gathered for a sunset vigil in this tight-knit rural community near Houston that became the scene of the latest US school massacre.

Just hours after a teen gunman killed 10 people, mostly fellow classmates, and wounded 10 others, they came together near the school to light candles, pray for strength, weep for their fallen friends, and recall the morning’s horror.

Evan and friends were startled when a fellow student, identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, burst into the class, then they recoiled at the carnage that unfolded.

“When he opened the door to shoot Kyle, he was like ‘Surprise!’ and then he shot him in the chest area,” said Evan, who described how a bullet grazed his left shoulder. His knee, cut by broken glass, was also bandaged.