Santa Clarita school shooter dies from self-inflicted wound
Detectives searching for motive in attack that killed two students
Sadly, there has been another tragic school shooting, this time at the Los Angeles area’s Saugus High School.
The alleged teen shooter, who killed two students and then turned the gun on himself, has died from his self-inflicted bullet wound to the head.
Nathaniel Berhow, 16, was pronounced dead at about 3:30 p.m. on Friday, a day and a half after the shooting on the grounds of the Santa Clarita high school, CBS Los Angeles reported, citing the Los Angeles Sheriff’s office.
Berhow, an experienced gunman, had first killed two classmates — 14-year-old Dominic Blackwell and 15-year-old Gracie Anne Muehlberger — and injured three others before firing his last bullet into his head and dropping his empty gun, police said.
Investigators are still searching for a motive for the attack.
Detectives have conducted 40 interviews and still have six to go in their efforts to piece together what led up to the shooting in Santa Clarita. It is not clear how the shooter got the weapon, a .45-caliber handgun. However, authorities say that at this point, they do not think the shooter targeted specific students.
Authorities seized several unregistered firearms from the home of the teenager, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace the origins of the handgun used in the shooting, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said.
“We are chasing all the leads available,” Villanueva said. “At this stage, we don’t know the motive.”
Fellow students who knew Berhow are in shock over the killings.
“I literally thought he was a normal kid,” said Brizio DelRosario, 16, who ran with Berhow on the Junior Varsity Cross Country team. “We would run together sometimes. The last time I saw him was at a race about 2 weeks ago, he was totally normal. I started next to him and he wished me luck.”
He wasn’t a quiet or a weird kid,” DelRosario said.
Another teammate, who asked that his name not be used, said the student, whom they called Nathan, was in a group of about 7 or 8 friends who all ran track at Saugus High and went to parties together. He said he knew Nathan “very well” and that he is “the sweetest kid you’ll ever meet.”
He said he first met Nathan when Nathan was a freshman and he was a sophomore. They became close friends shortly after Nathan’s father passed away in 2017.
“Nathan is shy,” the friend said. “I saw Nathan yesterday, we went on a hill run with maybe four guys. He was totally normal, cracking jokes as usual.”
Neighbors indicate Berhow’s father had passed away about a year ago.
…Jared Axen, believed the suspect had been going through a tough time in his life.
“From what I understand, the suspect had been the one who had found his father’s body inside the house. You’re always looking, as a community, for ways you can reach out to the person next to you, someone you know is going through something,” Axen said. “What’s hard is that the answer you sometimes get is, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ You need to be wiling to press them for information.”
Friends of Gracie Muehlberger, the first Santa Clarita school shooting fatality to be identified, are sharing their memories of the freshman.
Saugus sophomore class president Victoria Phan described Gracie as a “bubbly” and “friendly” girl who was always smiling and laughing.
“She was this super sweet girl,” Phan, 15, told BuzzFeed News. “She had tons of friends was always very nice and caring.”
A 14-year-old friend of Gracie’s told BuzzFeed News that she was an “all-American girl.”
“You just had to love her,” said a friend of Gracie Muehlberger, who was killed in Thursday’s school shooting. “She always had a smile on her face.” https://t.co/7hXAf1OTog
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) November 15, 2019
Friends are also paying tribute to the second slain victim, 14-year-old Dominic Blackwell.
Anthony Martinez, a student at Canyon High School, described Dominic as not only his friend and football teammate, but also a brother.
“He was always smiling, making people laugh, spreading positiv[ity], he was the sweetest kid ever and such a good kid,” Martinez wrote on Instagram. “We need more people like you in this world.”
Today a lil guy with a big heart lost his life in the Saugus Shooting. He was always smiling making people laugh, always positive, he was the sweetest kid ever and such a good kid. We need more people like you long live dominic blackwell, love you?❤ #LLDB #santaclaritashooting pic.twitter.com/lAE7lfImJM
— anthony martinez (@martin3zanthony) November 15, 2019
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Stop calling these “school shootings.” They are shootings that took place at a school, as opposed to the mall, grocery store or WalMart. I’m venturing to say we are not getting the complete story here. Bully’s will never admit to bullying and have a habit of calling their victims nice people.
Hear! Hear!
Just like the Deep State…….
But that’s why the gun grabbers invented the term “school shooting.”
Any shooting that takes place at a school is a school shooting. If a drug dealer and customer meet in a high school parking lot at 3:00a.m. and the deal goes bad, that’s a school shooting.
They want to make it sound like the students are targeted all the time.
Berhow, an experienced gunman,
______________________________
this is a kid of 16–quite an assertion without any backup
Apparently his father, who passed away in 2017 was a hunter. He taught the kid to shoot and hunt. They had family hunting trips. Pictures of him/Dad with deer. It’s pretty safe to say he was experienced in shooting.
He also found his father dead when he died in 2017. Nobody has said how the father died in anything I have found. At a guess, given the police found many (really the normal amount if you are a deer and duck hunter (diff weapons for each) guns at the home, after the father died the mother may not have locked them up as securely as the father might have.
His father also was a re loader since there was bullet equipment. Makes sense, cheaper for ammo that way if you hunt often.
If in fact it was a family of hunters, this point is even more curious, then:
Perhaps the kid had an alter ego or something. I have always been around hunters and I’ve never known one to have any tolerance for not following the applicable laws depending on the state.
I don’t know if CA requires registration of weapons purchased years ago, which is what this seems to be.
How does this seem like weapons purchased years ago?
Casualobserver, a 16 y.o. kid can’t purchase any kind of firearm. To purchase a handgun, per federal law an individual must be at least 21 years of age.
Occam’s Razor; the firearm belonged to his dad. His dad was a hunter, shooter, and reloader. He died on 5 December 2017 of a sudden heart attack. But he suffered from chronic health problems, specifically complications of alcoholism.
I hesitated to mention that as just because he had been a chronic alcoholic doesn’t mean he was still drinking at the time of his death. I’ve know other chronic alcoholics who quit drinking when their doctor told them bluntly that they had so severely damaged their body that just one drink could kill them. Chronic alcoholism poisons jut about every organ in one’s body, and even if an alcoholic stops drinking doctors can still tell that they once were heavy drinkers because the damage is permanent.
He may have been suffering from other health problems before he died; dunno, that information wasn’t in his obituary. But given Kali has a mandatory 10 day waiting period he would have had to have purchased the firearm in November 2017 even if he picked it up the day he died. If he purchased the firearm in November but died too early to pick it up due to the waiting period, nobody else could have picked it up.
November 2017 was two years ago this month. Hence by definition “years ago.” Kali has a firearms registry; the sale is automatically entered into the registry at point of sale (just the sale, not the serial number). There is no law requiring anyone to register previously owned firearms. I haven’t been able to find out when kali created their firearms registry. I know it was after 2005 when I escaped that insane asylum.
It appears per Kali penal code §28150 that the first iteration of Kali’s firearms registry went into effect on 1 January 2012.
If the murdering little bastard’s dad legally purchased the firearm, and there’s no reason to suspect he didn’t, the purchase would have been automatically registered at the point of sale. But only if he had purchased it after 1 January 2012.
If his dad taught him to shoot so they could go hunting together that doesn’t mean he was an experienced handgun shooter. I started hunting ducks with my uncle when I was 11. Then deer when I was about 14. So by the time I was this mass murderer’s age I was a good wing shot with a shotgun and I was a good rifle shot.
But I didn’t get much range time with a pistol. Only some plinking with a High Standard .22 pistol (cool pistols; they had interchangeable barrels so you could a variety of different length/weight barrels on the same frame).
Being experienced with shotguns or rifles does not mean the little creep was experienced with a handgun. Especially a .45 semi auto (I’m guessing a .45 ACP but not necessarily a 1911). It’s not a transferable skill. I know the .22 plinker did do something to prepare me to move up to larger center fire pistols, but you couldn’t call me experienced with handguns at 16.
What scares me is this generation that has been taught their feelz are the most important thing in the world and gives them permission and justification to do anything they want….kill…destroy…deny rights to…who ever and whatever group they want
Pearl Bailey would set them straight, along with their Leftist parents and grandparents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va-06VmRWzI
Pearl Bailey discusses her life and career, and her earning a college degree, in this 1990 TV interview with DIck Cavett.
Liberalism kils. It’s been killing everything in its sights since the late 50s.
Nice…uh….non-sequitur.
Read below.
This shooting is pretty simple. The kid was a simple suicide. He wanted to die, but he wanted to make a splash when he did it. Not very hard to figure out.
Now, the problem with this type of incident is that NO effective security, or any security really, existed at the school. A student was able to walk onto campus with a deadly weapon, in this case a handgun, and shoot five people and himself. It was lucky that all the shooter brought was a handgun and a magazine with less that 15 rounds. Imagine the carnage if he had a high powered rifle and several magazines with 100 or more rounds?
But, fear not. Nothing will be done to prevent these kind of incidents from happening. Why? Because the school systems do not want to spend the money.
What a complete an utter garbage take on this….
Not really. It simplifies it, but doesn’t go into psychological analysis, which at this point, that knowledge is becoming widespread and commonly known.
Again:
Connect the dots between liberalism and the plague of narcissism in our country:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315524771/chapters/10.4324/9781315524771-12
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=liberalism+and+narcissism
Connect the dots between narcissism and school shootings and the like:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=narcissism+and+school+shootings
Btw, leftist ‘planners’ have long been advocating liberal doctrine with the hope it will grow like cancer and destroy our society, so they can move in and take over in the chaos.
It’s been working great. No other evidence is needed than the election of a malignant freak like ‘barack hussein obama,’ (or whoever he really is).
The problem for leftist handlers is that Americans are not yet as stupid as they hoped. Hence the election of Donald Trump, and the rejection of a the likes of virulent scum like hillary clinton and rino nonsense like Jeb! Bush.
The left needs the ‘boomer’ generation to die off. Being impatient about it, they’re starting the “OK Boomer” movement, in an attempt to ignite a war between the boomer generation and younger, indoctrinated useful idiots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Boomer
If they can’t wait for use to die off, they’re willing to start a movement to kill us off.
Never forget who obama immediately appointed to his inner circle upon his election: maoist antia dunn, communist van jones, and genocide advocate john holdren:
https://evolutionnews.org/2009/08/in_his_own_words_john_holdrens/
https://www.cfact.org/2014/05/31/john-holdren-in-his-own-radical-words/
We’re at war, folks. The shooting has indeed started, but by proxies, like the manufactured maniac in the photo above.
Mac’s point was that schools are fine with kids getting killed…you agreed…
Garbage take
Who are the “schools”? They’re not us. They’re run by the most vile of corrupt anti-American, anti-freedom bastards, who take their marching orders from the most vile humans on the face of the Earth.
That said, to corrupt, vile fascist, EVERYONE is expendable. If the narcissists they created start blasting away and cause the collapse of our freedom, it’s “Miller time” at the fascist bar.
Mac45 is right.
Look, there are crazy people in this world. Sorry to be the one to break that to you. And, there is no way that society can identify and stop all of them from committing anti-social acts against the rest of society. They only thing that people can do is to put effective practices in place to held themselves.
In the case of facilities, it is possible to put effective security in place to control ingress and to monitor the the introduction of dangerous weapons and other items. We do this in airports, courthouses and a number of other locations. It can be done at schools as well. In the case of public spaces, people can actually arm and train themselves to stop an armed attacker. Yet, even in locales which allow citizens to carry firearms, only about 5% of those who can do so, actually do. Arresting and committing people does not provide any real solution, because criminals and those committed for mental health issues are released into society every single day.
People really have to wake up and realize that the world is a dangerous place and that they have to provide for their own security.
I agree with Mac, it certainly looks like the suicide of someone that wanted to make a splash.
“Metoo#” has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with creating young narcissistic monsters who will do the dirty work of the left, just like this monster did.
“This shooting is pretty simple. The kid was a simple suicide. He wanted to die, but he wanted to make a splash when he did it. Not very hard to figure out.”
Agreed, Mac. And I blame the 24 hour news cycle, because he knew he’d be famous within minutes. Of course the leftists running the MSM were going to make him famous; he’s now the poster child for the Socialist gun control agenda. I believe it’s Jim Treacher who sent out the tweet, “journalism is all about deciding what the public doesn’t need to know because it might reflect badly on Democrats.” The corollary is that the leftists in the MSM must promote anything that advances the socialist project. So of course they are going to hype this to the hilt.
Which is why every time a white police officer or ordinary white “Hispanic” kills an “unarmed black child” (Trayvon Martin was 17 and old enough to join the military with a parent’s permission but they used a picture of him when he was about 11, and Michael Brown was 18 and legally an adult and could have joined the military without a parent, although I’m sure the military would have rejected them both just based on their drug use alone) it’s national news for weeks because it fits the “1619” narrative that this country is irredeemably racist.
But when a black homeowner shoots and kills an unarmed white teenager, as happened in Greece, N.Y. in 2013, the leftist deems it just a local story and they don’t cover it.
Just like they didn’t cover the Gosnell trial in Philadelphia. Forget about the fact he broke Pennsylvania law probably thousands of times by performing abortions after the legal cut off. He must have killed hundreds of babies after they were born. This happens for more than people imagine. Because abortionists like Gosnell become calloused. Why is it legal to deliver a baby until only it’s head remains in the birth canal, the baby struggling, and take a pair of scissors and cut its spinal cord at the base of the skull? But it’s not legal to kill it one minute later if the abortionist happens to accidentally let it slip all the way out?
I wish the Weekly Standard article was still available as it had video of a Florida Planned Parenthood official endorsing infanticide if a baby should be born alive. Unfortunately I’ll have to rely on the transcript from national review. It doesn’t really do the revolting nature of Alisa Laport Snow’s testimony nature of her testimony as she went before a legislative committee and basically said it’s none of the government’s business if a woman wants to kill her unwanted baby.
https://www.nationalreview.com/human-exceptionalism/planned-parenthood-official-endorses-infanticide-wesley-j-smith/
“‘So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief,’ said Rep. Jim Boyd. ‘If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?’
‘We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,’ said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.”
Then there was the fact that Gosnell had killed at least two women who went to his cat and cat feces-covered abattoir (a whole-in-the-wall pizza joint would have been shut down by the health department considering the unsanitary conditions, but abortion must go on at all costs so the health department never inspected it as required in nearly 20 years). One was a young black woman, the other a refugee from Burma. Normally these would be just the kind of victims the MSM would champion. But not when it comes to just what exactly goes on in the abortion industry.
The prosecutors were two pro-abortion women. They couldn’t believe what was going on at Gosnell’s butcher shop. Most of the jurors were pro-abortion because it was, after all, the Democrat party stronghold of Philadelphia. But both prosecutors were shocked at what they learned. The jurors sometimes let out audible gasps when they saw the photos the prosecution entered into evidence.
I don’t know how many of the jurors changed their minds entirely and became pro-life. Some did. And at least the prosecutors and the rest of the jurors questioned their dedication to abortion any time for any reason and at least decided that there had to be limits.
So naturally the national press couldn’t cover the Gosnell trial. If they had that would have had the same effect on the public at large. We can’t have that, can we? And, as I said, Gosnell was not an outlier. He was sentenced to life in prison and he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. It’s simply impossible for abortionists to do tens of thousands of abortions and not destroy their souls, if they ever had one before going into the murder business.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-prominent-abortionist-accidentally-demolishes-nearly-every-pro-abortion-argument-in-less-than-one-minute
“The Daily Wire
News
Shows
Discussions
Store
Login
Subscribe
November 5th, 2019
WALSH: Prominent Abortionist Accidentally Demolishes Nearly Every Pro-Abortion Argument In Less Than One Minute
By Matt Walsh
DailyWire.com
Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Facebook
Twitter
Mail
As Live Action reports, prominent abortionist/serial killer Leroy Carhart, who has committed countless late-term abortions in his long and blood-drenched career, recently celebrated (somewhat ironically) his birthday. It was the decoration in his birthday photo that caught people’s attention. Carhart is seen posing next to his cake with a little placard that read: “Even on my worst days, I’m killing it.”
We can be certain that this quip is meant to imply exactly what it seems to imply. Indeed, Carhart does quite a bit of killing every day. And abortionists are not above joking about the slaughter they carry out. Recall, for example, the Planned Parenthood executive who joked that she might be able to buy a Lamborghini from all the money she makes on selling baby parts. When you have forfeited your soul, even dead babies are funny.
… But the phrase ‘I’m killing it’ is significant in Carhart’s case for another reason. It didn’t get any attention when it first aired, but the BBC did an interview with the abortionist a few months ago in which he admitted that he kills babies. That is, he didn’t bother with the usual euphemisms about ‘fetuses’ and ‘terminations.’ He called his victims ‘babies,’ and said he even uses the term with the women who come to him. When asked if he ‘has a problem with killing babies,’ he responded ‘absolutely not.’
… When pushed about the ethics of killing fully developed and viable infants, Carhart explained that ‘the baby has no input in this’ as far as he’s concerned. From the baby’s perspective, says Carhart, ‘it makes no difference whether it’s born or not born.’
Carhart knows that ‘fetus’ is just another word for baby. That’s why he uses the terms interchangeably. He knows that the women who seek his services are already mothers before they walk through the door. He knows that he is killing a human child. He knows that this act of killing is not medically necessary for the mother. Pro-abortion propagandists carry on with their talking points and sanitized language, but the guy who actually wields the scalpel knows better. He knows what he is doing and what — or I should say who — he is doing it to. His justification is cruelly simple: The baby doesn’t get a say. The baby’s life just doesn’t matter …”
Everybody in the abortion industry knows they’re killing human children, and they just don’t care. And they don’t care if they kill that baby before he or she is born or after.
As I said, the leftist MSM doesn’t want the truth about that, and so many other things, getting out or the country would know how truly evil the left is and also the agenda they push.
Considering that there are over 130 thousand schools (elementary through high) in the US, I’m always surprised that they collectively suffer so few events which are considered newsworthy.
Especially considering the “epidemic” we keep hearing about from the idiot media.
the prospects of preventing every attack by a determined/demented lone wolf perpetrator are a low order of probability indeed–consider israel as an example–the populace, as a group, would consider some of the most situationally alert folks on this planet(with a large portion of them being in or veterans of the military services–and these sort of incidents(albeit mostly with explosives)occur there on a regular basis–we have(as a group)nowhere near the awareness/capability of the israeli populace and there are several critical reasons for our situation–no use bashing ourselves over the head when these events take place–they are virtually unstoppable as proven over millenia throughout the world
If people want to abort the intellectual position that bad things, like mass shootings, happen and that there is nothing that can be done to stop or prevent these thing from happening, I can live with that. But, that is not what happens. the media jumps on these things and blames them on firearms, mental health programs [or the lack of them], or racial bias. They also sometimes look to blame these incidents upon elected officials, some of whom have no responsibility for the incidents.
However, people do not live in houses which do not have locks on the doors, because there are burglars in the world. We do not ignore people who run red lights, because we can not stop everyone from running red lights. We take precautions were we can to minimize risk. Now, we can not eliminate risk. But, we can minimize it. Now, school shootings can be all but eliminated. However, effective security is expensive. And, no school system wants to spend the money. Then you have the ostrich faction. These people believe that if they simply ignore the problem, it will never occur.
So, if people are satisfied with the possibility that their children will be gunned down in school, or in the supermarket, then lets just ignore these incidents and get on with our lives. It doesn’t matter, anyway.
This particular shooting has been mostly ignored by blogs and the media. I’m wondering why that is.
It happened in CA. Which has all the restrictive gun laws gun grabbers insist will stop such shooting. Yet it happened. Maybe no one wants to explain HOW it happened when the laws to prevent it existed….
According to the new articles about it, the shooter had a girlfriend, who wasn’t one of the victims. IIRC, none of the other shooters had someone of the opposite sex who could actually be referred to as a girlfriend. So he’s not an “incel”. Something changed in his mood in the previous few days according to friends interviewed. Did she dump him? That’s not answered, but if she did, you would think he’d be targeting her, not apparently random other students.
We can be certain it’s not sudden jihadi syndrome….
Cub Scout and Boy Scout? Track Team? He’s been trained or socialized to work and play well with others.
He doesn’t fit the loser or loner profile.
I don’t think we’re ever going to find out a motivation for this shooting. It’s off the charts weird compared to all the others of the last few years.
The only question that likely will have an answer is: Where did the gun come from? And that’s likely going to end up being the fault of an adult in his life for not securing it properly. None of the stories have mentioned any other adult in his life but his mother.
Betcha he was taking drugs from an early age…
bad things, like mass shootings, happen and that there is nothing that can be done to stop or prevent these thing from happening,
______________________________________________________________
that’s not what was said mac–i said the prospects for preventing ” every one ” are low simply by virtue of the nature of these attacks–which is a tangential way of saying
” no matter what we do, no matter how many firearms are confiscated, no matter how much training is promulgated, there is simply no way(at least over the last several thousand years or so)to prevent every attack of this type so the very idea that confiscating firearms can(or will)is pure nonsense. “
What you implied is that nothing can be done to stop lone wolf attacks. This is a horrible oversimplification. While it is true that not every attack can be thwarted, just as every homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, theft and assault can be thwarted, society can take steps to reduce the likelihood of these things happening. Locks and burglar alarms are widely used to reduce he likelihood of burglary. We have police and security personnel, as well as armed citizens, to reduce the likelihood of crimes against persons.
Now, the most effective means of stopping any crime is having effective security measures in place t the point where the criminal action takes place. It is very difficult to prevent a crime before the point where it occurs. The problem that exists in today’s society, is that a significant portion of the population does not want to acknowledge that these threats even exist. They want to put their heads n the sand and ignore the potential threat. When the threat manifests itself, these people then either demand that someone, other than the perpetrator, be punished or wave it all away saying there is no way to stop it from happening.
The young man at Saugus HS was insane. Sane people do not shoot and kill others randomly. And, there is really nothing that can be done, before the act, to prevent it. How ever, had there benn effective security at the school which would have found the weapon before he gained access to the campus or was able to engage and neutralize the threat of it materialized at the point of entry, then innocent people would still be alive. So, one has to ask, if these types of attacks are so horrific, why is nothing done to secure the target of these attacks, our schools?
“The young man at Saugus HS was insane.”
Given the new norms of the society created by the left and enabled by the corrupt GOPe, this kid was no more insane than Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi or Alexandra Cortez or Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton or Fauxcahontas.
He was just looking for his 15 minutes before he ended his pain.
Think back hundreds of years: Americans have always been armed. A shooting of this kind was LITERALLY unheard of throughout our history.
The left has destroyed the minds of two generations. LITERALLY.
Actually, similar attacks have occurred throughout US history. The difference is the current media environment.
Up until the late 1970s almost all news was locally reported. In order for the national wire services to pick up an incident, it had to be extremely newsworthy. Then television news came along. Television news had to find stories which would grab the attention of viewers in order to gain and hold viewership and make money. It also made news more personal, rather than the largely sterile written news report. Reporters became actors and editors became directors who skewed the reporting to benefit their organizations. Today, we have murder suicides, which 50 years ago would never have made it into the national news, being presented coast-to-coast, by reporters clutching their pearls and wring their hands as they almost weep while delivering an account of this story.
Now mass school shootings are very, very rare, in the US. So rare that almost all school systems have no effective security in place to stop them. The local school system is simply unable to justify the expense necessary to provide such security, given the extremely rare nature of the threat. However, this does not stop the pearl-clutching media from hyping such incidents to the max and searching for someone to blame for them, other than the perpetrator. And, of course the usual suspects in the special interest community jump in as well. Then, when the bloom is off the story, everything goes back to the way it was.
It is all a matter of sold perception, not reality.