The father of the teenager accused of fatally shooting 10 people at a Texas high school last week suggested that bullying may have pushed his son to carry out the attack.
In an interview with Greece’s Antenna TV over the weekend, Antonios Pagourtzis, the father of 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, said he told police to let him into the school, so his son could shoot him instead of other students, The Associated Press reported.
The father said that his son “was a solid boy” and that something must have happened to push the teen to carry out the shooting.
{mosads}
“Something must have happened now, this last week,” he said. “Somebody probably came and hurt him, and since he was a solid boy, I don’t know what could have happened. I can’t say what happened. All I can say is what I suspect as a father.”
Dimitrios Pagourtzis is accused of opening fire at Sante Fe High School, near Houston, on Friday. The attack left 10 people dead and another 10 injured. Officials allege that he carried out the attack with a shotgun and a .38 revolver that belonged to his father.
Antonios Pagourtzis told Antenna TV that his son was a victim, because the guns belonged to him.
“My son, to me, is not a criminal, he’s a victim,” he said, according to the AP. “The kid didn’t own guns, I owned guns.”
Antonios Pagourtzis also said that his son never displayed violent tendencies, and that he could not picture the teenager carrying out such an attack.
“He pulled the trigger, but he is not this person,” the father said. “It is like we see in the movies when someone gets into his body and does things that are not done. It’s not possible in one day for the child to have changed so much.”