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Suspected Santa Fe school shooter 'wanted to stay alone,' football teammates say

Dimitri Pagourtzis' life is now under a microscope, and many at Santa Fe High School say they never saw any warning signs prior to the shooting.

Santa Fe — The life of suspected Santa Fe High School shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis is now under a microscope, and many at the school say they never saw any warning signs.

Ten people died and ten more were injured in the shooting Friday morning after police say Pagourtzis, 17, entered the school and started opening fire with a shotgun and a revolver.

The small community southeast of Houston is still trying to understand and process the painful blow.

Remember their names: Santa Fe High School shooting victims identified

According to records online, Pagourtzis played on the school’s junior varsity football team as a junior.

Teammates Jacob Smircic and Michael Moore say that Pagourtzis was an eager defensive lineman, but quiet and introverted inside the locker room.

Moore plays linebacker and said that he would often take the field with Pagourtzis during practice.

“We would run some drills, and he would never really talk to anybody,” Moore said.

Smircic, who plays tight end, says that Pagourtzis wasn’t social with other teammates off the field.

“He was welcome to all of us, we tried to make him as comfortable as anyone else,” Smircic said. “But I think he just wanted to stay alone to himself.”

“We always invited him to do stuff with us, and always tried to get him to come hang out with us—but he was just not really about that,” Moore said.

Both teens say they were unaware of the disturbing footprint that Pagourtzis left behind on social media accounts.

One picture Pagourtzis posted was of a t-shirt that says, “born to kill.” Another post shows a trench coat with Nazi regalia on it—along with a pin that indicated Kamikaze tactics, Pagourtzis claimed.

Investigators say Pagourtzis wore a long trench coat when he entered the school.

For Moore, he says he only wishes he knew of the struggles Pagourtzis was going through sooner.

“I can’t even believe that one of my teammates, one of my brothers, would go out and do something like this—and none of us knew how he was feeling,” Moore said. “I wish he would have just come and talked to us.”

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