Investigators seek clues to alleged gunman's motives

The 15-year-old accused of killing two fellow students at a California high school was an 'angry young man' but apparently lashed out at no particular target, investigators said.

Charles Andrew 'Andy' Williams seemingly shot at random.

He expressed no remorse for Monday’s shootings at Santana High School in the San Diego suburb of Santee, said Police Lieutenant Jerry Lewis.

"We don’t know if he was mad at the school, mad at students, mad at life, mad at home," Lewis said. "He was an angry young man."

Williams was a new kid in a large school, a child of divorced parents living with his father. He was also a skinny freshman whose skateboard had been stolen twice.

Friends say that over the weekend Williams talked so much about taking a gun to school that they searched him before classes on Monday.

But he was known for pranks, and friends wrote off his comments as one of his frequent jokes.

The father of one friend even called Williams at home over the weekend to ask if there was anything to his talk of taking a gun to school. He decided there was not.

No one seemed to believe the clean-cut kid, who was frequently teased, was about to perpetuate the nation’s latest high school bloodbath.

The disbelief remained a day after the shooting, which left 13 others injured.

Williams is expected to be arraigned later today as an adult on charges that include murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

Dressed in a baggy jail-issue jumpsuit that draped past his ankles, the teenager stared at the ground as he was led into juvenile hall by sheriff’s deputies on Monday.

Bryan Zuckor, 14, and 17-year-old Randy Gordon were killed; 11 other students and two adults - a special education student teacher and a campus security worker - were wounded. Several had been released from area hospitals.

The boy allegedly shot two people in a toilet, then walked into a yard and fired randomly, stopping to reload as many as four times and getting off 30 or more shots, Lewis said.

"The information we have from the evidence and the witnesses (is) the suspect was firing randomly at anybody who was going by", Lewis said.

"Any student who was going by he was shooting at."

FBI spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said the agency, which had analysed 18 school shootings, has developed guidelines which could help authorities assess whether someone was a threat.

But it had found there was no real profile of characteristics which would explain such behaviour, she said, adding: "We’ve seen these kids come from very good homes where they have two loving parents. There really is no menu for this".

Authorities said the gun used in the shooting, an eight-shot, .22-calibre long rifle revolver, belonged to his father, who told investigators it was kept in a locked cabinet.

When Williams surrendered, the gun was fully loaded with eight rounds, its hammer cocked, investigators said. He went to school with as many as 40 rounds.

Authorities said the shooting could have been much worse if not for the swift actions of a sheriff’s deputy and an off-duty police officer who was on campus to register his child in the school.