William Atchison, 21, fatally shot two students at his former alma mater Aztec High School in New Mexico on Thursday. He then shot and killed himself, which was all carefully planned and documented on his social media before carrying out the shooting.
“If things go according to plan, today would be when I die,” Atchison posted online an hour before committing the horrible crime. “I wait until the school buses are detected, then head on foot disguised as a student. I go somewhere and gear up, then hold a class hostage and go ape-s–t, then blow my brains out.”
The message was posted at 6:51 AM. He gave no clear motives as to why he picked his former school as the target, ending the note with, “work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want out of this s**t.” A search of the gunman’s room led to a ‘to-do’ list in his wastebasket, where he reminded himself to ‘pack up’; ‘prep’; ‘walk’ and ‘die.’
Francisco ‘Paco’ Fernandez was a junior and played on the high school football team. Paco came face to face with Atchison in the second-floor bathroom of the school at around 8:04 AM and did not survive the gunshot.
The 21-year-old stepped out into the hallway and shot his second victim, Casey Jordan-Marquez, 17, a cheerleader in her senior year. He continued down the hallway shooting into classrooms and at one point went inside a computer lab with 16 students in the class.
Fortunately, a 74-year-old substitute teacher took the students inside a storage room and barricaded the door with a couch. Atchison went back out into the hallway after failing to shoot anyone in the lab, turning the gun on himself.
He lived with his parents in Aztec and attended the local high school years back, but never graduated. The sheriff says he had no criminal record, but he did have a brush with law enforcement in March of 2016 when the FBI investigated him due to comments he wrote on an online gaming forum.
‘It was not a specific threat, it was not about Aztec, in particular,’ FBI Special Agent Terry Wade noted. He talked about what weapons he would use in a mass shooting, and FBI agents went to his home and ‘extensively’ interviewed the subject and his parents.
They closed the investigation after Atchison said he had no plans of committing any violent crimes and that he just enjoyed ‘trolling’ people online. He didn’t own any guns at that point, but a month ago, he legally purchased the gun used for the shooting.
Students of Aztec High School are still at a loss due to what occurred, reminiscing about the times they spent with Francisco ‘Paco’ Fernandez and Casey Jordan-Marquez. A former teammate of Fernandez, Deja Greenleaf, said ‘nothing seems real’ anymore.
“We were always there for each other no matter what was happening on a personal level or something that happened outside of school,’ said Greenleaf. “We are always there. Nothing seems real. You just want to believe everything is OK and you move through the stages of grief.”
Bryn Divine, a senior, remembered Jordan-Marquez as a vibrant girl who was always friendly and often won dance contests at the school. “She lit up pretty much any room we were all in,” Divine said. “She was such a fun person to be around.”
GoFundMe pages for both victims are almost at their goals in just one day. The page for Fernandez raised nearly $10,000 of their 15K goal, while the page for Jordan-Marquez is just $500 from their $5K goal.
This article was inspired by NYDAILYNEWS // New Mexico high school shooter penned eerie online post about ‘going ape-s–t’ before randomly killing students