The Marysville School shooter has been named as 15-year-old high school freshman Jaylen Fryberg, who was described by friends at the school as a “happy” and “popular” student who played football and was even crowned the school’s “Homecoming Prince” just a week before his rampage in which he killed one female student and wounded two other girls and two boys before fatally turning his handgun on himself.
Other students said that Fryberg deliberately targeted his victims — who included two of his own cousins.
“He went after his friends, who were sitting at a certain table,” said Jordan Luton, another freshman at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in a suburb of Seattle. “He came up from behind and had a gun in his hand and he fired about eight bullets. They were his friends so it wasn’t just random.”
Heaven Arbuckle, who was identified as a cousin of Fryberg’s , said two other cousins — whose names were Nate and Andrew — were among the four Marysville school students wounded by Fryberg when he opened fire with the handgun at 10:40 a.m. Pacific Time Friday morning.
Andrew Fryberg, 15, was out of surgery Friday afternoon, according to a report in The Seattle Times . The other wounded cousin was shot through the jaw and listed in serious condition.
Arbuckle said that Fryberg was devastated over a recent breakup with a girlfriend.
“He was heartbroken and didn’t know what to do,” Arbuckle told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper. “Jaylen wasn’t a bad kid, he just made a mistake.”
Whether the female Marysville student killed by Fryberg was that girlfriend had not yet been revealed by investigators by Friday evening. But another 15-year-old student, Jarron Webb, said that one of the two girls shot by Fryberg was a girl who turned him down for dates.
Marysville high school shooter Jaylen Fryberg was crowned Homecoming Prince last week http://t.co/Z9r6XYxbEy pic.twitter.com/ZnpLgBmwXK
— Global Grind (@GlobalGrind) October 24, 2014
A report by NBC News also said that Fryberg, who posted a series of morose, angry, and ominous Twitter messages in recent days, had been involved in a fight or argument with another student at the Marysville school, and that the dispute took on an ugly racial tone .
Classmates described Fryberg as extremely proud of his Native American heritage, and the gunman had posted pictures of himself in the traditional headdress of the Tulalip Tribes on his Facebook page.
Brandon Carr, a teammate of Fryberg’s on the Marysville freshman football team, said that Fryberg seemed normal and happy at football practice the afternoon before Friday morning’s school shooting.
“He was all happy, dancing around and listening to music. I don’t know what happened today,” Carr told The Seattle Times .
Despite the reports of Jaylen Fryberg’s despondency over a failed romantic relationship, investigators have not yet said what they believe motivated the Marysville School shooter to open fire on is own friends and family members, then end his own young life.
