Santa Clarita shooting: Students heard gunfire and ran. ‘When I go home I’m gonna cry’

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Denzel Abesamis, a senior at Saugus High School, was about to make a turn into campus when he saw classmates running out.

“I automatically made a detour to leave because I knew something bad happened,” he said in a text message.

He called a friend who he knew was at school, and she said there was a shooter on campus and that she was hiding in a classroom with five other students.

Authorities said a gunman wearing black shot at least five people. Three were critically wounded. Sources described the gunman as a student.

Several students were placed on gurneys and taken to ambulances in the school’s parking lot.

Parents rushed to the campus. Many students reported seeing people running from the section of the school where the shooting appeared to begin.

Abesamis said that during his freshman year they’d had a lockdown after reports of a threat.

“I’ve always been worried (that) something like this would happen,” he said. “Since then, Saugus has emphasized the importance of making sure to always be cautious of anything that may happen, like an active shooter.”

Lauren Farmer, 17, said she was in the library when she heard a gunshot. At first she thought it was a balloon popping but then she heard two more blasts.

“That’s when we realized this isn’t normal,” she said. “Something is wrong.” Lauren and her friend, 15-year-old Hannah Schooping-Gutierrez, started racing for the main entrance and heard three more gunshots as they fled.

Schooping-Gutierrez says she was joined by a number of other students racing away from the school’s quad “fearing for their lives, with facial expressions that I’ve never seen before.”

Several other students told them they saw a gunman in all black opening fire near the quad.

Both girls said they were stunned but composed, but know that the gravity of what they just experienced would sink in later.

“When I go home I’m gonna cry,” Schooping-Gutierrez said. “Right now I feel like I need to be strong for my parents.”

The shooting came two months after six students at the high school were detained on felony criminal threats after authorities were alerted to threats the teenagers had made online.

A William S. Hart Union School District staff member discovered the social media posts “regarding committing acts of school violence” and alerted authorities, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Detectives and deputies quickly investigated and determined which young people had made the posts, according to the agency.

It’s unclear whether those threats were connected to the shooting Thursday.