Paige Curry was visibly shaken during her interview Friday.
She had just been escorted out of Santa Fe High School, where a gunman had killed 10 people. She and others had hidden behind a stage in school’s theater room as the shooting went on. She told reporters she was scared, struggled to keep calm and remembered another student having a panic attack.
Despite the fear, the gunshots she heard and the trauma she’ll deal with the rest of her life, the incident came as no surprise to Paige.
“It’s been happening everywhere, I’ve always kind of felt that eventually it would happen here, too,” Paige told CNN affiliate KPRC-TV.
This is the 22nd US school shooting since the beginning of the year, and the third instance in eight days in which a gunman was on a school campus.
It’s also the third time within a six-month period the state of Texas has made national headlines. In November, a gunman killed 26 people in Sutherland Springs. Then in March, a “serial bomber” detonated five bomb attacks over the course of 19 days, that left two people dead.
Two people have been detained in connection with the Santa Fe High School shooting, authorities say. The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office identified the shooter as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, who is in jail. The sheriff’s office said he is accused of capital murder.
The alleged shooter used a shotgun and a .38 revolver that were owned legally by his father, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters. Two school resource officers were on the campus and confronted the shooter “early on in the process,” Abbott said.
Investigators believe that the second person in custody, an 18-year-old, may be an accomplice but not a shooter, a law enforcement official said.