Mystery over what triggered high school shooting

An angry online posting from the 17-year-old boy who opened fire at a Nebraska high school, killing an assistant principal before shooting himself dead, offers some clues about why he turned violent.

As authorities work to sort out what may have led to yesterday’s shooting, those who knew Robert Butler Jr. are struggling to reconcile his final actions with their memories of the fun, outgoing student who liked to make jokes and sometimes got into trouble for talking in class.

The gunman, the son of a police detective who had attended Omaha’s Millard South High School for no more than two months, also wounded the principal before fleeing the scene and fatally shooting himself in his car about a mile away.

“It’s just unreal,” said Robert Uribe, Butler’s step-grandfather. Mr Uribe said nothing appeared to be wrong when he talked to Butler briefly when he last saw him a month ago. He said the polite young man he knew did not seem like a likely gunman. “I don’t know what would possess him to do that.”

Assistant principal Vicki Kaspar, 58, died at Creighton University Medical Centre on Wednesday evening, hours after the shooting. Principal Curtis Case, 45, was in serious but stable condition.

Butler posted a rambling message on Facebook shortly before the shooting about his unhappiness with his new school, but he didn’t supply many details. Instead, the expletive-laced note predicted Butler’s friends would hear about the “evil things” he was about to do.

He wrote that the Omaha school was worse than his previous one, and that the new city had changed him. He apologised and said he wanted people to remember him for who he was before affecting “the lives of the families I ruined”. The post ended with “goodbye”.

Butler had transferred in autumn from a high school in Lincoln, about 50 miles south west of Omaha.

A former classmate from Lincoln, Conner Gerner, recalled Butler as being energetic, fun and outgoing. He said Butler sometimes got in trouble for speaking out too much in class, but he did not seem angry.

“He just seemed like he had a lot of energy. He liked to talk to people. He was always moving,” he said.

Another friend, Jacob Edward Rinke, said he and some others had exchange Facebook posts with Butler the night before the shooting. The discussion was about cars and included what he described as normal ribbing between friends.

“We were hazing each other about car stuff. He seemed fine and everything. He seemed happy.”

He said Butler had lived up the street from him and they used to play sports and video games together.

“He didn’t seem like a kid who would go out and do this. When I first heard about this in school I didn’t believe it. I was pretty much in denial about it.”

Lincoln school officials declined to provide details about Butler’s student record there, but they described him as a “fairly normal, average student”. Lincoln Southwest High School principal Rob Slauson said Butler was involved in few, if any, activities.

Omaha Police Chief Alex Hayes provided no details on the weapon Butler used or how he obtained it. Butler’s father is a detective for the Omaha Police Department. Investigators were interviewing the seven-year veteran to learn more about what may have led to the shooting.