Saugus High School Shooter Dead From Self-Inflicted Gunshot to Head after Killing 2 ‘Random’ Victims
Students are escorted out of Saugus High School after reports of a shooting on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019, in Santa Clarita, Calif. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
(IBEXNews) - The teen triggerman who killed two students at Saugus High School in California died Friday from a self-inflicted gunshot to his head, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
Nathaniel Tennosuke Berhow, 16, succumbed to the injury at 3:32 p.m. with his mom by his side, officials said.
At an afternoon press conference, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the shooter used an unregistered semiautomatic pistol in his 16-second rampage and appeared to count his bullets as he picked off fellow students.
A total of six firearms traced back to Berhow’s dead father as the investigation unfolded, but they don’t match the weapon recovered at the school, Villanueva said.
The sheriff said the dead dad’s six guns were all “accounted for” Friday and that a different, possibly illegal cache was found in a sweep of the suspect’s residence in Santa Clarita, Calif.
“There were several firearms recovered from the house, however they are not the ones that were registered to the father,” Villanueva said. “Some of these firearms were not registered at all.”
The two victims killed in the senseless violence were identified Friday as Gracie Anne Muehlberger, 15, and Dominic Blackwell, 14.
Speaking to reporters, Villanueva denied speculation the shooter was targeting specific girls.
“As far as we know the actual targets were at random, there’s no relationship that we can tell from the suspect and the victims,” he said.
“We know it was a planned attack. It was deliberate. He knew how many rounds he had,” the sheriff said, adding that the suspect was dropped off at school by his mom.
The sheriff said it appeared Berhow was trained to use his .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun.
“In 16 seconds, he cleared a malfunction and was able to shoot five people and himself, so he seemed very familiar with firing the weapon,” Villanueva said.
The sheriff said the suspect was identified among the wounded students only after authorities managed to review surveillance video 30 minutes after the shooting and match up his clothing.
“It doesn’t appear he had any interaction with anyone. He was just standing by himself, at one point decided (it was time), walked to the center of the quad area, dropped the backpack, withdrew the firearm and just started firing right from where he was at," the sheriff said.
He said investigators consider the attack premeditated because the shooter brought the weapon to school, and the gun was empty when it was found, meaning he knew he only had about six rounds and saved the last one for himself.
“The way he was firing his weapon, he was counting his rounds. It appeared he knew exactly what he had,” Villanueva said. “It wasn’t a spur of the moment act.”
He said the motive “still remains a mystery.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. Kent Wegener said Friday that a search of the suspect’s house yielded no manifesto, diary, suicide note or other writings that shed light on the shooter’s state of mind.
Wegener also said an Instagram account thought to belong to Berhow, which ominously instructed Saugus students to "have fun at school tomorrow,” turned out to be the work of someone overseas and had been deactivated by Facebook.
Meanwhile, the two teen girls injured by the hail of bullets were doing well Friday and getting ready to go home, hopefully in a day or two, officials at Providence Holy Cross Hospital told reporters Friday.
The girls, ages 14 and 15, were sitting up, “smiling and talking” as they continued their recoveries, Dr. Boris Borazjani said.
He called the shooting the latest incident in “an unacceptable public health problem.”
Hospital officials said the 15-year-old girl suffered a gunshot wound below her belly button and that doctors were able to retrieve the bullet, which was lodged in her left hip.
The 14-year-old girl had a gunshot wound to her left shoulder and lower abdomen and was “doing well,” doctors said Friday.
