Unidentified fellow student puts flowers to the wall commemmorating the tragedy from last week‘s Monday.
PHOTO-REUTERS
Charles „Andy“ Williams looked nervous in the courtroom where his arraignment on charges of murder, attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon was continued for two weeks so that his lawyers could research whether they could stop him being tried as an adult.
Two people died and 13 were wounded in last week‘s attack at Santana High School in the middle-class San Diego suburb of Santee. If convicted he would face several life jail terms but because of his age he would not be subject to the death penalty. Defense lawyers said they wanted time to consider a legal challenge to the new California law that decrees anyone over age of 14 accused or murder must be tried as an adult.
Pale figure, dark deeds
Williams, a slight, pale figure with large dark eyes, did not speak during the hearing. Friends have said he was frequently bullied at school and although some of them heard him talking about taking a gun to campus, none took him seriously. Several students turned up in court, angry or curious to see the boy accused of the worst incident of school violence in the United States since two teenagers killed 15 people, including themselves, at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.
None of Williams‘ family was in court however. The boy moved to Santee with his father and brother last year from rural Maryland and rarely sees his mother.
Across the nation last Monday‘s bloodbath inspired a series of copycat attacks.
Bitter recriminations appeared against those students who said they had heard of Williams‘ plans but dismissed them as a joke. Three friends who have spoken widely to the media were excluded from returning to school for their own safety. The school had advised the parents of the three to consider seeking a different school for them in view of the intense emotions at Santana High. They are not expelled.
Emotions raw
Williams, whose parents are divorced, is said to have stolen the .22 caliber handgun used in the attack from his father‘s locked gun collection. Investigators have since seized seven other weapons from the family‘s apartment.
Friends in rural Maryland painted a very different picture to the smiling gunman arrested on Monday. „He just has a gentle kind heart. The person I saw on TV in the police car was empty. That wasn‘t the boy who came and ate dinner at our house and called me mom,“ said Mary Nederlander, the mother of Williams‘ former Maryland girlfriend Kathleen Seek. „He e-mailed us and told us that he just wanted to come home and that it was just awful over there. They were teasing him, calling him ‘country boy.‘ He didn‘t dress right, he didn‘t look right. He was skinny, they called him gay,“ Nederlander told NBC‘s „Today“ show.
Reuters
