PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Students at Parkrose High School noticed their classmate hadn’t been himself before the young man brought a gun to school on Friday morning.
Before the frantic phone calls and texts to loved ones and students hiding in bathrooms or under choir robes, at least two students told school staff they were worried about a senior boy.
Diamond Morris told KOIN 6 News she talked to the suspect in gym class and he told her he tried to commit suicide a few times. He told her he had been drinking and smoking to “stop his pain a little bit” and that he was drunk at that moment.
“After he told me all that, I was worried and when the bell rang I told the teacher,” Diamond said.
“I’ve never been in that sort of situation, never seen that happen,” Diamond said. “I was just like ‘I should tell the teacher just in case.’ I don’t want him to kill himself and I feel bad cause I knew about it, like he was going through stuff.”
Shortly after that, the school was locked down because the student had a shotgun. Football coach Keanon Lowe found and disarmed him before anyone was hurt.
“I feel like I failed a little bit. I feel like I saw signs of him doing that and I feel like I just could have said something,” senior Alexa Pope said. “I could’ve gone to a counselor and been like ‘hey, I noticed he hasn’t been himself.'”
Pope said the student wasn’t bullied.
“I think his intentions were to show others his pain,” she said. “He had a gun. I have to assume the worst.”
School officials said in a letter to parents that the student — who was later identified as 18-year-old Parkrose High School student Angel Granados Dias — will not be returning to school and there is no additional threat to students.
“Thank you to the brave students who expressed their concern for their peer and to our staff who quickly responded to protect our students,” Superintendent Michael Lopes Serrao said in the letter.