I just freaked out, said teen gunman who killed school head

A teenager accused of gunning down his school head told Wisconsin detectives in a videotaped interview that he did not mean to kill him but “freaked out” when the principal tackled him in a school hallway.

Eric Hainstock, 16, also told investigators in the same interview hours after John Klang was fatally wounded that he had been in anger management classes for years but found them useless.

“He’s like: ’Your choices are based on your beliefs’,” Hainstock said, referring to his instructor. “Like, ’duh’. It gets annoying.”

Prosecutors presented the videotaped interrogation of Hainstock at a hearing in on his request to be tried as a juvenile. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on adult charges. If convicted as a juvenile, Hainstock would be released at 25.

Authorities say Hainstock, then 15, walked into Weston High School in Cazenovia before classes on September 29 last year and shot Klang three times as the principal tried to wrestle the boy to the ground. Klang managed to disarm Hainstock but died later that day.

The videotape, time-stamped less than three hours after the shooting, shows Hainstock sitting in an interview room with his face buried in his arms. He has the hood on his sweatshirt pulled over his head.

Hainstock told detectives he was upset with school chiefs because they did not stop other pupils from picking on him and calling him names.

Going to school with guns occurred to him just that morning, he said, and he just wanted officials to listen to him.

When Klang grabbed him from behind and put him in a bear hug, he put the revolver under his left armpit and shot the principal, he said. He said he did not mean to kill him, but “I just freaked out”.

“It was just, ’Pop!’ and then a couple seconds later, ’Pop!’ and then a couple seconds later, ’Pop!”’ Hainstock said.

Weston Schools teacher Alyssa Brewer told the hearing that Hainstock once threw a chair in a classroom and challenged a music teacher to a fight over a spitball shooter.

Prosecutors wanted Brewer’s testimony to show Hainstock’s violence as impulsive and that he still could be dangerous at 25.

Defence lawyers have been working to portray Hainstock as immature and a victim of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of his family and classmates.

They argue that he needs treatment available only in the juvenile system.