The police said they know that his mother dropped him off at school on Thursday morning. They know there were six more weapons inside his house. What they do not know is why he did it.
“We did not find any manifesto, any diary that spelled it out, any suicide note, or any writings which will clearly identify his motive behind this assault,” Capt. Kent Wegener of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference on Friday before the gunman’s death. He said that the police had conducted more than 40 interviews, but that “no motive or rationale” had been uncovered.
The authorities identified the gunman as Nathaniel T. Berhow. Although he shot himself in the head, he initially survived and was transported to a hospital along with the other victims.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva of Los Angeles County said the gunman was silent as he shot the five students at Saugus High School. He seemed to have planned the attack, the sheriff said, and also seemed familiar with how to use the gun, quickly fixing a malfunction and firing all but one round before shooting himself in the head. The shooting was captured on video, and the gunman appeared to have selected his victims at random.
“It doesn’t appear he had any interaction with anyone,” Villanueva said. “He was just standing by himself, at one point walked to the center of that quad area — dropped the backpack — withdrew with a firearm and just started firing.”
The coroner’s office identified the two students who died in the shooting as Gracie Anne Muehlberger, a 15-year-old girl, and Dominic Blackwell, a 14-year-old boy. Gracie’s father said in a brief phone interview on Thursday afternoon that the family was grieving.
This article originally appeared in
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