“The gunman then comes back into their room and they hear him saying … are you dead? Then more shots are fired,” Deedra Van Ness wrote. “By this time, cell phones all over the classroom are ringing and he’s taunting the kids in the closet asking them … do you think it’s for you? do you want to come answer it? Then he proceeds to fire more bullets into the closet and tries to get in.” ||||| “With a broken heart and a soul that just can’t process all this right now, I have to announce my niece was one of the fatalities,” her aunt, Sylvia Pritchett, wrote in a Facebook post. “Please keep all the families in your thoughts, and hug your children tightly.” 
 
 Sabika Sheikh 
 
 Sabika Sheikh, 17, was supposed to return home to Pakistan in a matter of weeks. After months at Santa Fe High School as part of an exchange program sponsored by the State Department, Sabika had asked her mother to cook her favorite meal when she was to get back on June 9. She had asked her younger brother, Ali, to straighten up her room for her arrival. She had spoken to her younger sister on the telephone just hours before the shooting started. 
 
 “She was thinking big, at such a young age,” her father, Abdul Aziz Sheikh, said from his home in Karachi. “Sabika was a very talented and obedient child.” 
 
 He said he learned of his daughter’s death after seeing news reports and trying — again and again — to dial and text his daughter’s telephone. “There was nothing I heard back from her,” he said. 
 
 Mr. Sheikh eventually heard from exchange program leaders that his daughter had died in the shooting. He called on American officials to enact stronger gun regulations, and said he hoped no other family would have to experience such pain. 
 
 “I knew the pain of losing a child,” he said, “and pray to God, no parent would go through this situation.” 
 
 On the Pakistani Embassy in Washington’s Facebook page, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States expressed condolences to families of the victims. 
 
 Image Sabika Sheikh. 
 
 “Our thoughts and prayers are with Sabika’s family and friends,” the ambassador, Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, said. 
 
 American officials said Sabika had been part of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program. A State Department official said the department extended its deepest condolences to Sabika’s family and friends, and that David Hale, the ambassador to Pakistan, was reaching out to her family. 
 
 “As an exchange student, Sabika was a youth ambassador, a bridge between our peoples and cultures,” Mr. Hale said on Facebook on Saturday. “All of us at the U.S. Mission in Pakistan are devastated by and mourn her loss. We will honor her memory.” 
 
 Christopher Stone 
 
 At 17 years old, Christopher Stone was the baby of the family, the youngest of three siblings. But he still played the role of protector to his sisters, Angelica and Mercedez, as if he were the oldest, said his father, who is also named Christopher. ||||| The mother of 16-year-old Shana Fisher believes that her daughter was intentionally targeted by Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the suspected shooter at a Texas high school. Fisher was one of 10 people killed when a gunman opened fire Friday at Santa Fe High School. 
 
 Sadie Rodriguez said Pagourtzi repeatedly made advances toward Fisher in the four months leading up to the shooting. Pagourtzi was an ex-boyfriend of Fisher's best friend, she said. 
 
 "He kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no," said Rodriguez over Facebook Messenger. "He continued to get more aggressive." 
 
 Shana Fisher 
 
 Rodriguez said that the week before the shooting, Fisher "stood up to him" by "embarrass(ing) him in class." Rodriguez gave no other details. 
 
 Rodriguez described her daughter as a "shy and sweet" with a passion for video games. Rodriguez shared a video of Fisher from 2015, in which the teen contemplates whether or not she'll continue making gaming videos because her computer keeps crashing. 
 
 The day of the shooting, Rodriguez wrote in a Facebook status to "love like (you're) getting one more day with them." 
 
 "Anything can happen," she wrote. "I will no longer get to see my baby my 1st born anymore." 
 
 Students at Santa Fe High School return to pick up belongings 
 
 Pagourtzi was taken into custody Friday after the shooting and is facing capital murder charges. His motive remains unclear. In a probable cause affidavit, however, authorities said the suspect admitted to the shooting. The gunman also told investigators that when he opened fire Friday morning, "he did not shoot students he did like so he could have his story told," according to the affidavit. 
 
 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday the suspect intended to kill himself but gave up and told police that he did not have the courage to take his own life. ||||| This undated photo from Facebook shows Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who law enforcement officials have taken into custody and identified as the suspect in the deadly school shooting Friday, May 18, 2018, in... (Associated Press) 
 
 This undated photo from Facebook shows Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who law enforcement officials have taken into custody and identified as the suspect in the deadly school shooting Friday, May 18, 2018, in Santa Fe, Texas, near Houston. (Facebook via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 SANTA FE, Texas (AP) — The mother of one of the 10 people killed at a Texas high school said her daughter recently rejected the romantic advances of the 17-year-old charged in the shootings, a possible motive for the violent tragedy. 
 
 Sadie Rodriguez said her daughter, Shana Fisher, had made clear that she was not interested in Dimitrios Pagourtzis. 
 
 "He continued to get more aggressive," Rodriguez told The Associated Press in an interview conducted Saturday via Facebook. "She finally stood up to him and embarrassed him." 
 
 The incident took place one week before the shooting, Rodriguez said. Police have not yet said what might have motivated the attack. 
 
 Asked about Rodriguez's allegation, a lawyer for the Pagourtzis's family said he hadn't heard about any such interaction between Pagourtzis and any of the victims and therefore couldn't comment. 
 
 "That's news to me," said lawyer Nicholas Poehl, though he cautioned that he'd spent much of the day disputing false rumors about the teen's personal life. Earlier Saturday, Poehl issued a statement from the family saying that they were "as shocked and confused as anyone else by these events that occurred" and asked for privacy. 
 
 "While we remain mostly in the dark about the specifics of yesterday's tragedy, what we have learned from media reports seems incompatible with the boy we love," the family's statement said. 
 
 Representatives of the school district did not immediately respond to questions about Rodriguez's comments. 
 
 A junior at Santa Fe High, Pagourtzis hid a shotgun and a handgun under his trenchcoat before opening fire in a first-period art class on Friday, according to an affidavit filed by police. The FBI announced Saturday that it had taken the lead in the joint investigation, at the request of local authorities. 
 
 "He gave a statement admitting to shooting multiple people inside the Santa Fe High School with the intent on killing people," the police affidavit said. "Dimitrios advised he did not shoot students he did like so he could have his story told." The attack ended when Pagourtzis walked out of a classroom and surrendered to police. 
 
 Authorities say Pagourtzis planned the killings, carried out with weapons owned by his father. Though Pagourtzis allegedly wrote about his intention to carry out the attack, authorities have not indicated a motive for the violence. 
 
 Gov. Greg Abbott said Pagourtzis had planned to kill himself after the shooting, but that Pagourtzis told police "that he didn't have the courage to commit the suicide." 
 
 Some Santa Fe High students indicated that Pagourtzis may have had one or more targets, though details were not clear. Breanna Quintanilla, 17, a junior, said she was in her art classroom Friday morning in what she described as a "perfectly normal day" when she heard gun shots. 
 
 Quintanilla said when Pagourtzis first walked in, he pointed at one person and said, "I'm going to kill you." Quintanilla, who was wounded escaping the classroom, did not identify that student. 
 
 At a news conference, Abbott said Pagourtzis had not previously been in trouble. "The red-flag warnings were either nonexistent or very imperceptible," he said. 
 
 In the absence of a clear motive, attention turned to a hodge-podge of incendiary posts by Pagourtzis on social media, which were quickly removed when his identity first emerged. One Facebook post was a picture of a T-shirt reading "Born to Kill." Another showed a trench coat adorned with various pins associated with conflicting ideologies and Cthulhu, a mythical creature drawn from the work of horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft. 
 
 In the wake of the shooting, various reports that Pagourtzis was bullied have surfaced from his classmates. However, two Santa Fe High students who said they knew Pagourtzis said they had no reason to suspect that he was planning Friday's attack. 
 
 Student Michael Farina said he had known the alleged gunman since fifth grade and considered him a friend. He recalled Pagourtzis talked about buying a gun "when I grow up," but never discussed his dad's guns or anything about his family. 
 
 Farina said he and Pagourtzis also talked a lot about video games they liked, including so-called first-person shooter games. They'd talked about one, "Escape from Tarkov," as recently as lunch on the day before the shooting, he said. 
 
 Farina did not recall Pagourtzis ever being notably angry. 
 
 "He seemed relatively happy for the most part," he said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Horwitz reported from Washington and Zimmerman from Springfield, Illinois. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, and John Mone and Nomaan Merchant in Santa Fe, Texas, contributed. 
 
 ___ 
 
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– Sixteen-year-old Shana Fisher died in the art room of Santa Fe High School on Friday, but only after "4 months of problems from this boy," the suspected shooter, Shana's mom tells the Los Angeles Times. Sadie Rodriguez says that Dimitrios Pagourtzis "kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no." "He continued to get more aggressive," she said, per CBS News, until, at the end of her rope, Shana publicly embarrassed Pagourtzis in front of their class. "A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn't like," Rodriguez says. "Shana being the first one." That Shana was the first victim remains uncorroborated at this point, but Breanna Quintanilla, 17, tells the AP she was in the art room on a "perfectly normal day" when Pagourtzis walked in, pointed at an unidentified person, and said, "I'm going to kill you." (The New York Times has profiles of all the shooting victims.)