Washington School Shooting Suspect Claims He Was Bullied

The teenager accused of gunning down a classmate and wounding three others during a rampage at a Washington state high school told police he wanted “to teach a everyone a lesson about what happens when you bully others.”

According to court records released Thursday, Caleb Sharpe, 15, also divulged the last words of the sophomore he allegedly killed.

Image: Caleb Sharpe Image: Caleb Sharpe

Spokane County sheriff’s deputies escorted Caleb Sharpe to the Juvenile Detention Center in Spokane, Washington, on Wednesday. Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review via AP

“I always knew you were going to shoot up the school,” said the victim, Sam Strahan, the documents quote Sharpe as saying. “You know that is going to get you in trouble.”

Sharpe was being held at the Spokane County juvenile detention and was awaiting a court appearance in connection with Wednesday’s shootings at Freeman High School in the town of Rockford, about 25 miles southwest of Spokane.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said authorities intend to charge Sharpe as an adult with premeditated murder.

Meanwhile, the three female students who were shot were recuperating and listed as stable at a hospital, officials said. Their names haven’t been released.

Sharpe was a troubled teenager and had “been in the care of a school counselor for suicidal ideations (thoughts),” the court records state.

Even so, Sharpe’s father, Benjamin Sharpe, told a detective that his son “knows the combination to the large gun safe which is most likely where the firearms came from.”

Sharpe was armed with an “automatic rifle and automatic handgun” that he’d gotten from his father’s arsenal and that he carried to school on the bus in a “black sports style duffel bag,” the papers say.

Law enforcement sources, however, told NBC News that the weapons were actually semi-automatic.

A Freeman High School bus driver identified in the papers as Debbie Conklin told police that she picked up Sharpe at the regular bus stop near his home and that she made note of the duffel bag because Sharpe doesn’t take part in athletic activities.

When Sharpe got to the school, he entered via a side entrance, where he tried and failed to load the rifle, investigators said.

“The gun immediately jammed and he struggled to load it,” the records state. So the suspect “abandoned the rifle and pulled his handgun out from under his coat.”

It was around this time that Sharpe crossed paths with Strahan, according to the court papers, which identify him by the initials S.D.S. Sharpe told police that “he had been picked on by S.D.S. before but did not come to school specifically to shoot S.D.S.,” the documents say.

Police said Sharpe shot Strahan in the abdomen near classroom 211, opposite a row of lockers.

“S.D.S. bent over and Caleb shot S.D.S. once more in the face,” the papers state. “S.D.S. fell to the ground and Caleb then began to move down the hall firing at students near the lockers.”

Sharpe continued firing until that gun jammed, according to the documents, which say that after he ejected a live round, the suspect “accidentally fired another round which hit the floor nearby.”

The rampage ended when a school custodian approached Sharpe and ordered him to surrender, Knezovich said. Minutes later, Deputy Ron Nye, who had been at a nearby middle school, arrived and took the teenager into custody.

Later, Sharpe’s mother, Erica Sharpe, reported finding a suicide note that her son had written a week earlier and left behind on a counter.

Sharpe “bragged of owning multiple pistols,” a friend, identified in the court papers by the initials D.A.P., told police. He also claimed to have made explosives known as IEDs “from various chemicals and white gas,” the documents say.

The teenage suspect also posted several YouTube videos in which he and another youth appeared to be shooting at each other with some kind of guns, NBC News has confirmed. The videos have been deleted, and it wasn’t clear what kind of weapons they were wielding.