Category: Michael Novakhov – SharedNewsLinks℠

Former President Trump on Saturday dismissed findings from the Justice Department about Russia’s covert efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. elections and joked about whether he should be offended that Vladimir Putin had offered a tongue-in-cheek endorsement of Vice President Harris.

Trump held a rally in Wisconsin, where he referenced a Justice Department announcement earlier in the week that it seized 32 web domains Russia has used for its influence campaigns.

“Three days ago it started again. The Justice Department said Russia may be involved in our elections again,” Trump said. “Russia. It’s Russia. And you know the whole world laughed at them this time.

“They said just the other day, the attorney general, ‘We are looking at Russia.’ And I said oh no. It’s Russia, Russia, Russia all over again,” Trump said, referring to the investigation into his 2016 campaign by special counsel Robert Mueller. “But they don’t look at China and they don’t look at Iran. I don’t know what it is with poor Russia.”

The Biden administration earlier this week condemned Russian efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. election.

The Justice Department seized web domains and targeted two employees of RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a Russian state media outlet with content available in English, charging the duo with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The indictment accuses the two of partnering with a conservative-leaning media company to help sow division in the U.S.

Collectively, the two actions are some of the strongest moves taken under the Biden White House to confront accelerating efforts by the Russian government the intelligence community has deemed “the predominant threat to U.S. elections.”

Trump has in the past cast doubt on the intelligence community’s findings that Russia was attempting to influence U.S. elections, including during a meeting he had alongside Putin in 2018.

The intelligence community determined Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election, which Trump won, and the Justice Department investigated the Trump campaign over possible coordination with Moscow. The final special counsel report found no evidence of collusion.

Trump on Saturday also quipped about comments from Putin, who earlier in the week joked that he is supporting Harris in the upcoming election, citing her “infectious” laugh and potential to change U.S. sanctions on Russia.

“He endorsed Kamala. I was very offended by that. I wonder why he endorsed Kamala. No, he’s a chess player,” Trump said.

The former president has repeatedly said Putin does not fear or respect the current administration, though Trump’s critics have accused him of cozying up to autocrats and dictators.

U.S. intelligence officials warned Friday that the Russian government’s covert efforts to sway the presidential election are “more sophisticated than in prior election cycles,” and that Moscow is using artificial intelligence to create increasingly convincing fake content that could aid Trump. Four years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously endorsed the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump.

But Trump, who has repeatedly described the probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “hoax,” is dismissing them this time around, too.

“The Justice Department said Russia may be involved in our elections again,” Trump told the crowd at his rally. “And, you know, the whole world laughed at them this time.”

The Republican presidential nominee’s comments appeared to reference the indictment Wednesday of two Russia-based employees of Russia’s state-run news site, RT, in an alleged scheme in which they paid an American media company to spread English-language videos on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X.

“It’s Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. But they don’t look at China and they don’t look at Iran. They look at Russia. I don’t know what it is with poor Russia,” Trump said.

Trump’s rally, at the airport in Mosinee, Wis., was billed as focused on “draining the swamp,” but featured a stump speech that meandered from familiar attack lines about inflation and jobs to falsehoods about sex-change operations for minors, conspiracy theories about government employment statistics and dismissals of Russian interference in American elections.

The indictments were part of the administration’s most sweeping effort yet to tackle what it described as Russian disinformation campaigns ahead of the November election.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Washington Post this week that the indictments were “nonsense” and denied Russian interference in the elections. And Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that he wants Vice President Kamala Harris to win the election, rather than Trump, in a tongue-in-cheek endorsement that was widely viewed — including by the former president — as an effort to undermine rather than support her.

“I knew Putin, I knew him well,” Trump said at the rally Saturday. “The other day he endorsed Kamala. He endorsed Kamala. I was very, offended by that … I think it was done maybe with a smile.”

Peskov said in an interview on Russian TV this month that Moscow views Harris as a more predictable opponent than Trump. “The Democrats are more predictable. And what Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Ms. Harris,” he said.

But Russia, which is in the midst of a bloody, protracted invasion of its neighbor Ukraine, has other interests at stake in the 2024 election.

Trump, who has often boasted about his relationship with Putin and claimed without evidence that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he was president, has expressed deep skepticism about continuing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

“I will have that war finished and done and settled before I get to the White House,” Trump vowed Saturday, repeating sentiments that the Kremlin has previously dismissed. “As president elect, I will get that done.”

Cheeseman reported from Washington. Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.

The Georgia teenager who killed four people and wounded nine others in a shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday was interested in prior school shootings, according to multiple reports.

Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student of the school, was arrested at the scene northeast of Atlanta and later charged with four counts of murder. Additional charges are expected.

His first court appearance is scheduled for Friday.

Gray was allegedly “obsessed” with the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., where former student Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and wounded 17 others, sources told the New York Times.

In May 2023, authorities in Jackson County, Ga., investigated Gray after receiving a tip that he made threats online about shooting up a middle school. Gray, 13 at the time, denied making the threats, and his father said he knew nothing about them.

The threats came from a Discord account with a Russian username. According to an incident report obtained by Atlanta’s WSB-TV, “translation of the Russian letters spells out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza,” the 20-year-old man who killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

On Wednesday, the FBI and the local sheriff’s office said they hadn’t compiled enough evidence to arrest Gray or his father at the time, only issuing a warning to local schools for “continued monitoring” of the teen.

However, Discord representatives told TMZ on Thursday that Gray’s account was banned that May, six weeks after it was created in early April 2023, for violating the platform’s anti-extremism policy.

“Discord’s Safety Team immediately responded to law enforcement,” handed over information related to the investigation into the threats and removed the account, a rep told the outlet. The company said it had no record of Gray using the platform between then and Wednesday’s shooting.

Students at Apalachee High who were interviewed on Wednesday told reporters Gray fit the stereotype of a school shooter and often skipped school. Authorities said Wednesday was Gray’s second day attending school, even though the year began on Aug. 1.

“He skips usually, so you never really know where he’s going,” Lyela Sayarath told CNN, describing how Gray walked out of their math class before attempting to return with a firearm. The door had automatically locked behind him, she said, so he opened fire in the classroom next door.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said officers located Gray “five or six minutes” after the call for help went out. Gray complied with the officers’ commands immediately and was taken into custody.

“It was carnage. There was blood everywhere,” Smith told NBC News in an interview. “You could smell the gunpowder. Lotta screaming, yelling. Little bit of chaos.”

Students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, were identified Thursday as the victims. Aspinwall was also the defensive coordinator for the school’s football team, which canceled a game scheduled for Friday.

Originally Published:

Harris campaign reacts to Putin saying he supports Harris

02:04

– Source:
CNN

CNN
 — 

Russian President Vladimir Putin raised eyebrows Thursday when he expressed his support for US Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, flattering the Democratic nominee with some curiously timed remarks.

“Our ‘favorite,’ if you can call it that, was the current president, Mr. [Joe] Biden. But he was removed from the race, and he recommended all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. Well, we will do so – we will support her,” Putin said Thursday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. “She laughs so expressively and infectiously that it means that she is doing well.”

Putin also criticized former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump for placing “so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia like no other president has ever introduced before him.”

Putin’s comments come on the heels of sweeping sanctions announced by the Biden administration to combat a Russian government-backed disinformation effort to influence the 2024 elections and boost Trump’s candidacy.

And despite the Russian leader’s vocal support of the Democrats, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said on Wednesday that three Russian companies – at Putin’s direction – used fake profiles to promote false narratives on social media. Internal documents produced by one of those Russian companies show one of the goals of the propaganda effort was to support Trump’s candidacy or whoever emerged as the Republican nominee for president, according to an FBI affidavit.

So what is Putin trying to accomplish?

If the past is any guide, Putin is simply stirring the pot of US domestic politics. In December 2015, Putin praised Trump, calling him the front-runner months before the businessman secured the Republican nomination.

“He is a bright and talented person without any doubt,” Putin said, calling Trump “an outstanding and talented personality.”

Did Putin know something about the 2016 US presidential elections that the pollsters didn’t? No, but the Kremlin leader did little to conceal his dislike of Hillary Clinton, then the likely Democratic nominee.

And when purloined Democratic National Committee emails were leaked just ahead of the Democratic National Convention, Putin did not hide his glee.

While US officials pointed a firm finger of blame at Russia for the hack, Putin denied the Russian state had anything to do with it. And in remarks at the same forum in September 2016, he praised the leak as a sort of service to the voters, saying, “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”

That content being the embarrassing revelation in the leaked emails that Democratic officials gave preferential treatment to Clinton.

In other words, the whole DNC hack episode supported the Kremlin’s view that American democracy is a sham: Nothing matters but power, everything is decided in smoke-filled rooms, and hectoring countries like Russia about adherence to democracy and human rights is hypocritical.

Putin’s view of the American political system makes even more sense when we are reminded of an insight from exiled Russian political journalist Mikhail Zygar, the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men.”

Zygar noted that Putin loved “House of Cards” – the darkly cynical television series about Washington politics – and even recommended it to his ministers.

“That’s his American politics textbook,” Zygar said in an interview.

It’s also possible that Putin was simply trolling Harris by winking at a consistent insult from Trump about the way she laughs.

So if Putin’s take on US election politics is seen through the lens of “House of Cards,” then, Putin’s support of Harris is a sort of Frank Underwood move: A kind of endorsement poisonous to its recipient.

Additional reporting by Anna Chernova and Christian Edwards.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the indictments as “nonsense.”

He accused the United States of repressing journalists to quash a “truth” that it did not like. “This is not the first time that Russia has been blamed for interfering into America’s elections,” Peskov said in a message answering questions from The Washington Post. “Well of course it’s nonsense. We’re not interfering.”

“Our media are doing their job. They’re just reporting. They’re reporting the truth, but unfortunately Americans do not like uncomfortable truth for them, and should it appear, they immediately implement repressions against it. This is the reality.”

Peskov’s statement comes against a backdrop of Russia’s own practice of jailing journalists, dissidents, activists and ordinary citizens posting about the war in Ukraine or criticizing the regime.

As Peskov denied election interference, President Vladimir Putin claimed to be supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the race — despite the revelations from one of the indictments and a related set of charges that linked Russia’s efforts to supporting the Republican Party in the election.

“We had Biden as a favorite, but he was dropped from the race. He recommended that all his supporters should back Harris, so we will, too,” Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East.

Harris “has such an infectious laugh that it says she’s doing well,” Putin said, adding that as a result she might refrain from sanctioning Russia.

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed a 32-page federal indictment accusing the two RT employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, of conducting a money-laundering operation that spent nearly $10 million on efforts to covertly influence American public opinion, notably blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia.

In a separate legal action, U.S. prosecutors seized 32 Russian-controlled internet domains that were used in a state-controlled operation called “Doppelganger” to undermine international support for Ukraine and promote its preferred outcome in the U.S. presidential election.

The 277-page indictment over the Doppelganger campaign contains documents previously reported on by The Washington Post. The documents show that Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko directed a network of political strategists to promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions to undermine support for Ukraine.

The indictment includes additional documents by the same political strategists clearly showing the Kremlin campaign aims to bolster support for Moscow’s preferred political party, redacted as “U.S. Political Party A.” The earlier documents reported on by The Post make clear that this is the Republican Party.

One, titled “The Good Old USA Project,” states that the goal is “to secure victory of U.S. Political Party A candidate (Candidate A or one of his current internal party opponents) at the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.”

The Treasury and State departments on Wednesday also announced sanctions on Russian individuals and entities it accused of “malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” Among them was one of the Kremlin’s most prominent propagandists, RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan.

Peskov said Russia would develop retaliatory measures in response to the sanctioning of Russian state media. He said the measures could not be symmetrical but that decisions would be made soon regarding the spread of U.S. media news in Russia.

Russia’s foreign propaganda and disinformation operations play an increasing important role in Putin’s efforts to rebuild Russia as a great global power, amplifying divisions in the West and winning support in the Global South where pro-Kremlin narratives have gained significant traction. A key objective of the operations has been to weaken military support for Ukraine.

Another of the documents in the Doppelganger indictment lays out the Kremlin strategists’ plans to create a “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network” that would give explicit support for the Republican Party and some of its members’ stances questioning assistance for Ukraine.

“The U.S. Political Party A is currently advancing a relatively pro-Russian agenda. That could be exploited by posing as ardent U.S. Political Party A and relaying the part of their agenda that coincides with ours,” the document states. “One example would be the financial and military support to Ukraine.”

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials from Putin down have spoken openly of an “information war” being waged between Russia and the West, while denying interference in the politics of foreign countries.

But a 2019 report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that Russia launched an information war that included interference in the 2016 elections to boost Trump’s candidacy, and efforts have continued to spread Kremlin propaganda narratives that sow doubt and disinformation in the West.

In sanctioning Simonyan and others, the Treasury Department described her as “a central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts.”

When the news broke, Simonyan posted on Telegram: “Oh. They woke me up!” She followed up with another post, “Great work, team.”

Despite Kremlin denials of interference, Simonyan has frequently boasted on state television about RT’s ongoing efforts to sow pro-Kremlin narratives in the United States. Peskov did not answer a question on the apparent contradiction between the Kremlin’s position and Simonyan’s statements.

In a March interview, Simonyan described how RT created hundreds of information outlets, opening new ones whenever U.S. authorities shuttered them, in what she called an “information war.”

“We create many sources of information that are not tied to us. While the CIA tries to figure out that they’re tied to us, they already have an enormous audience. Sometimes they find them and close them down,” she said.

“It happens with us that you wake up in the morning and 600 channels are gone, immediately. But while they’re closing them, we’ve already made new ones. This is how we chase each other. It’s even fun.”

“War is not fun, but with an information war you can have fun,” she added, laughing heartily.

In a January interview she said it was “too optimistic” to hope that the United States was on the edge of a civil war or social collapse, adding that Russia has to face the prospect of America leading the world “like an elephant in a china shop” for many years to come.

“We, without question, have seriously destabilized this china shop. I mean this ridiculous, illogical, egotistical and unjust world order that has existed since 1991 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” she said referring to Russia’s view of U.S. global hegemony.

David Nakamura contributed to this report

CNN
 — 

The community of Winder, Georgia, is grieving two students and two teachers who were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School Wednesday. It’s the deadliest of 45 school shootings so far this year. Here’s the latest:

Live updates: The latest on the Georgia high school shooting

• Authorities arrest 14-year-old suspect: Colt Gray, a 14-year-old Apalachee High student accused of being the shooter, is in custody, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference. He will be charged with murder and will be handled as an adult, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.It was not immediately clear when Gray would make his first court appearance, but it will be “within a reasonable amount of time,” Hosey said.

• Authorities identify four killed: Hosey identified the four killed in Wednesday’s shooting as 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, 14-year-old Christian Angulo, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimie. The school’s website shows the two adults were both math teachers and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.

• Nine others injured: Nine other people – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All of those wounded are expected to recover.

• How the shooting unfolded: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. Law enforcement arrived shortly after, Hosey said, in addition to two school resource officers who were assigned to Apalachee High. The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. A school resource deputy confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.

• AR-platform weapon used in shooting: The weapon used in the shooting was an AR-platform weapon, Hosey said. A law enforcement official earlier told CNN it was an AR-15-style rifle, but did not provide any information on how investigators believe the weapon was obtained or any other details on the weapon and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the weapon was brought into the school. “We’re still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline from the time that he got here to school today until the incident,” Hosey said.

• High school had received a phone threat: The high school had received an earlier phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call Wednesday morning warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who placed the call.

• County schools went into lockdown: All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there were no reports of secondary incidents or scenes.

• Government officials react to shooting: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.” President Joe Biden offered federal support to state and local officials and called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. “We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he said in a statement. General Merrick Garland said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene, working with state, local and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

• Local schools shutter after shooting: Schools in Barrow County will be closed the rest of the week while the investigation plays out. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School. Winder, which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau.

• How it compares to past school shootings: Of the 45 school shootings this year, 32 have been reported on K-12 campuses and 13 on university and college campuses. The US has suffered at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.

The suspect, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee, was questioned by law enforcement last year regarding “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He denied making the threats online, the agencies said.

The online threats included photographs of guns, the statement said.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have
unsupervised access to them,” the statement said.

The agencies added that “at that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.”

Investigators have spoken to the suspect and have been in touch with his family, Smith said. It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation.

One student, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspect left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. When the suspect returned near the end of the class, he knocked to get back in. Another student went to open the door, but Lyela said they noticed the gun and didn’t open the door. She said the shooter went to the classroom next door and opened fire.

Hosey said there’s no evidence of other schools being targeted, but investigators are pursuing “any leads of any potential associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident.” There’s also no evidence that any additional shooter was involved, and no evidence of a list of schools being targeted.

“However, there is a lot of evidence that is being recovered and evaluated,” Hosey added.

As law enforcement investigates the shooting and motive behind it, Smith warned that it could take “multiple days” to get answers.

Kemp thanked first responders and other officials who responded to the shooting Wednesday.

“This is everybody’s worst nightmare and I just want to offer my sincere condolences and our thoughts and prayers to the families that have lost loved ones, for those that are injured and continuing to fight through just a tragic time,” Kemp said.

Hosey called the faculty and staff at the high school “heroes” that took action to protect students.

“The heroes that we need to remember is our faculty and staff here at this school,” Hosey said. “They acted admirably. They were heroes in the actions that they took. The protocols in this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had here today so I want to recognize them.”

Kathrine Maldonado overslept Wednesday and missed school, she said. After she woke up later that morning, her friend texted her saying the school was in a lockdown.

Kathrine’s friend said she was okay and then started texting group chats, where they found out that a friend was killed and at least two more were injured.

“When I found out I started crying, and I just got mad, because why would you shoot innocent people,” Kathrine said.

Kathrine said her friend Christian, who died in the shooting, was known as a class clown and described him as a “sweet person.”

Other Apalachee High School students said they were still processing Wednesday’s tragedy.

“It’s been pretty difficult because like a lot happened in kind of a short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was kind of hard to process it.”

Another student, 14-year-old Macey Right, said she is worried about returning to school.

“I really don’t want to go back; I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying,” Right said. “I want to go to school worrying about what my GPA is going to be when my year is over and worrying about my career.”

CNN’s Isabel Rosales, John Miller, Nick Valencia, Dakin Andone, Sharif Paget, Elise Hammond, Maureen Chowdhury, Tori B. Powell, Nouran Salahieh and Amir Vera contributed to this report.

The 14-year-old student who opened fire on classmates in a horror mass shooting at Apalachee High School was on the radar of the FBI a year before the tragedy, it has emerged. 

The federal agency said it interviewed accused gunman Colt Gray, 14, and his father last year following ‘several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time.’ 

Officials said Gray ‘denied making the threats online’ at the time, and the only action taken was to warn local schools to ‘continually monitor’ the troubled teen.  

At a press conference Wednesday night, officials named the four victims of the shooting as teachers Christina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. 

In its statement on interviewing Gray last year, the FBI said the online threats included ‘photographs of guns.’ 

‘Within 24 hours, the FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia’ the statement continued, saying the ominous threats were referred to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office ‘for action.’ 

Under questioning, Gray’s father, who has not been named, told officers he owned hunting guns in his home, but Gray ‘did not have unsupervised access to them.’ 

The agency said after Gray denied the threats, Jackson County ‘alerted local schools for continued monitoring’ of the disturbed teen. 

Following the tragic shooting, a junior at Apalachee High School who was sat next to Gray revealed the gunman’s chilling behavior moments before he opened fire – and how she and her classmates narrowly avoided death.

Lyela Sayarath said she was sat next to the 14-year-old gunman in algebra class on Wednesday morning, and had no indication of the horror that would unfold as she described him as a ‘quiet’ teen.

‘He never really talked, he wasn’t (in school) most times, he would just skip class,’ she told CNN. ‘Even when he would have talked, it was one word answers.’

Sayarath said Gray left the classroom at 9:45am, around half an hour before active shooter alerts sounded, and thought he was skipping class as he didn’t take a bathroom pass from their teacher.

But while he was gone, a loudspeaker announcement told teachers to check their emails, before Sayarath said Gray re-appeared at their classroom door.

Still not realizing the danger, Sayarath said a student went to open the door for Gray before jumping back at the sight of his gun.

‘I guess he saw we weren’t going to let him in. And I guess the classroom next to me, their door was open so I think he just started shooting in the classroom,’ she said.

She said he proceeded to fire off a number of bullets ‘one after another’, adding: ‘When we heard it, most people just dropped to the floor and like kind of crawled in an area like piled on top of each other.’

Sayarath said her friend was in the next classroom and witnessed someone being shot, which left him ‘shaken up’. ‘He saw somebody get shot. He had blood on him. He was kinda limping. He looked horrified,’ she added.