Santee Searches for Answers as Motive Remains a Mystery

As authorities prepared to arraign school murder suspect Charles Andrew Williams, this community spent Tuesday asking questions no one could answer, searching for consolation and worrying that the memory of blood in a high school hallway may forever trouble the town’s conscience.

Sheriff’s investigators, despite hours of interrogating 15-year-old Williams, were still without a motive for Monday’s rampage. It left two people dead, 13 wounded and Williams, a diminutive Santana High School freshman, in jail on suicide watch.

Parents and students at Santana High struggled to understand who among them could have prevented the carnage, who stayed silent and why.

At dusk, scores of children walked their parents through the school, pointing out where they stood when the shooting started and where their friends were wounded or had died. Gone were several bullet-pocked backpacks that police had removed hours earlier. Some suggested that those bags, dropped in a hallway, may have saved children’s lives as Williams randomly fired at least 30 shots, reloading his weapon four times.

Brian Zuckor, 14, and Randy Gordon, 17, were killed. The wounded included 11 students and two adults--a student teacher and a campus security worker.

Four students remained hospitalized Tuesday in good condition at two San Diego hospitals. Student teacher Tim Estes, who was wounded in the chest, was released from Sharp Memorial Hospital.

Williams is set to be arraigned today at the East County Regional Center in El Cajon.

So many victims, family members and reporters were expected that court officials were arranging for video cameras in the courtroom so the proceedings could be transmitted to a nearby jury lounge that seats 200 people. Williams--who friends said was constantly picked on by bigger teenagers, and who authorities said acted out of unfocused rage--could face a sentence totaling hundreds of years. Prosecutors have said they will not seek the death sentence.

Williams’ father, Charles Jeffrey Williams, a 41-year-old lab technician at the Naval Medical Center-San Diego, said in a brief written statement Tuesday that the boy’s family was stunned by the rampage.

“We understand that the general public wants answers to how and why a thing like this could have happened at the hands of what everyone reports to be a well-mannered good kid,” the father said. “The family, too, joins the public in this need for answers.”

When asked about her son, the boy’s tearful mother, Linda Williams, who lives in North Augusta, S.C., told a local TV station: “He’s lost.” She and the boy’s father have been divorced for a decade.

Prosecutors said Charles Williams told them that the 8-shot, .22-caliber Arminius handgun used at Santana High came from a locked cabinet in the modest two-bedroom apartment the father shared with his son.

On Monday, deputies seized seven guns from the apartment, along with a computer and some clothing.

Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst said sheriff’s deputies and his investigators plan to interview possibly hundreds of students and adults to find out what they knew or suspected about the boy’s temperament and signs that he was about to go on a rampage.

At least one adult and several of Williams’ friends heard him make threats to shoot up the school.

Granger Ward, superintendent of Grossmont Union High School District, said that at least three students who knew about Williams’ plans to shoot up the school will not be allowed on campus today, when the school is scheduled to reopen for counseling sessions.

“I believe it’s not in the best interest of those three to be on campus. We probably need to look at legal counsel if in fact they did know this and did not respond. I do have concerns,” said Ward.

Even if they did hear Williams’ threats before the shooting, his friends and others probably would not be vulnerable to prosecution, said Franklin Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall. Likewise, Zimring said, debate over the moral obligation to report Williams’ threats can also be problematic.

To be sure, Pfingst said, there is no law that requires the average citizen to report suspicion that someone is about to commit a crime, even a heinous one.

Nonetheless, “we need to know how many people heard this kid saying threatening things, and how serious those warnings were. We need to know that not to file any charges but to decide, as a community: Was this avoidable?” he said.

San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender, ashen-faced at a Tuesday news conference, said that only the quick actions of a sheriff’s deputy and an off-duty police officer stopped Williams from shooting more people.

“I do believe that if it had not been for the conduct of the people involved . . . it would have been even worse,” he said.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Lt. Jerry Lewis said there is no evidence that Williams singled out victims.

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

Lewis said Zuckor, who was found dead in the bathroom, had been shot in the back of the head. But the shooting did not appear to be staged as an execution.

The other slain student, Gordon, was shot in the back just outside the bathroom and made his way outside, where his body was found by deputies lying on the grass between two buildings, Lewis said.

“Many students were shot as they were running by the hallway, leading to the administration building,” Lewis said.

Williams’ gun, which fires rifle-length rounds, was fully loaded, its hammer cocked, when the boy handed it over, Lewis said. Williams gave up the gun without hesitation, with no remorse and no ready explanation for his actions, investigators said Tuesday.

The Williams apartment was empty Tuesday morning, with lights left on by law enforcement officers who searched it the night before.

Several neighbors said they have seen the father returning from work in the early afternoon, but none said they knew the pair well. The family moved into the complex in August or September, several said.

Some neighbors were sympathetic.

“The public is grieving for the victims of the shooting,” said one neighbor, who asked not to be identified. But the elder Williams “has lost two things: He’s . . . lost his son, who’s going to spend a very long time in confinement, and he’s lost his whole world as he knew it.”

While investigators continued to assemble evidence, a memorial service was being planned for Friday. Gov. Gray Davis--whose wife, Sharon, attended Santana High and toured the school Tuesday--will attend the memorial at Sonrise Community Church.

After she toured the school, Sharon Davis told a crowd of children, “It’s very difficult to come back to this school under this circumstance. I think this community will come back. I’m very pleased to see how well this school and community are pulling together.”

Hundreds of parents, children, volunteers and church workers gathered at Sonrise--a converted supermarket two miles from Santana High School--on Tuesday to give some cathartic shape to the shock of Monday’s violence and the grief that trailed in its wake.

Santana senior Barry Gibson, wounded Monday in the thigh, stood up in church with the help of crutches to say he harbors no ill will toward his unlikely assailant. “I don’t feel angry. I don’t know him. I don’t judge people I don’t know.”

Some still could not stop the tears. Sixteen-year-old Santana sophomore Elizabeth Medina said, “I didn’t know what I was crying for--me being safe, or my friends being OK. Or the loss of the kids.”

Freshman Nichole Moritz, 15, could not sleep Monday night. She watched reports about the school shooting on television news until midnight. She could only find sleep by listening to favorite songs by the late rapper Tupac. Knowing that Tupac had been fatally shot himself somehow made his music a comfort, she said.

Teachers from the high school--many of them wearing high school sweatshirts--gathered Tuesday at a school district office for a grief counseling session.

English teacher Nancy Magee said that she is not afraid to return to school and that she doesn’t think her students should be, either. “I think they need to trust in the basic goodness of people.”

Administrators let students and parents, about 200 people in all, on campus for about 20 minutes late Tuesday to reclaim backpacks and other belongings.

Kelly Bonds said she thought she was ready for her 16-year-old daughter, Misty, to go back to school. She was wrong.

“I thought it was all right until we got on campus and she showed me where she ran and the bullets in the lockers,” said Kelly Bonds as she stroked her daughter’s hair. “The kid next to her got shot in the lip. I don’t know if I can ever send her back.”

They left the campus arm in arm. Both wept in the dark and rain.

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Times staff writers Robert Lee Hotz, Josh Meyer, Greg Krikorian, Bettina Boxall, Nancy Wride and H.G. Reza contributed to this story.