Nevada Shooter a 'Nice Kid,' Got Bullied: Classmate

Hero teacher memorialized by thousands
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 22, 2013 7:03 AM CDT
Updated Oct 22, 2013 7:35 AM CDT
Nevada Shooter a 'Nice Kid,' Got Bullied: Classmate
A Sparks Middle School student cries after being released from Agnes Risley Elementary School, where some students were evacuated to after the shooting, on Monday, October 21, 2013 in Sparks, Nev.   (AP Photo/Kevin Clifford)

Police still haven't released the name of the young shooter who wounded two 12-year-olds and killed a teacher at Sparks Middle School in Nevada yesterday before turning his parents' gun on himself, but a classmate describes him to CNN as "really a nice kid. He would make you smile when you were having a bad day." But, she says, she saw him getting bullied "and I think he took out his bullying." She thinks the two wounded students were his friends, but police say it's too early to know whether he was targeting anyone. Another classmate tells CBS News the shooter "pointed to us and he said, 'You ruined my life and now I'm going to ruin yours.'"

Mike Landsberry, the teacher killed when he tried to intervene, "was the kind of person that if somebody needed help, he would be there," says his brother. He was a popular teacher—two Facebook pages in his honor have thousands of "likes"—and apparently a popular stepdad as well. Paradise Post has a heartbreaking screenshot of a message his stepdaughter posted on Facebook in August, in which she calls him "Dad" and says she'll "always love him"; Landsberry responded, "You are my girl." The two students who were shot, one in the shoulder and one in the abdomen, are expected to survive. A candlelight vigil is planned for tomorrow, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports. (More Nevada stories.)

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