HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — Frantic 911 calls released Saturday describe the scene outside an Orange County high school after investigators say a former student opened fire.
The calls, made from inside and outside Orange High School on Wednesday, describe an unknown shooter and the chaotic, confusing scene unfolding in the parking lot.
"There's a man with a rifle shooting. He was shooting at the kids at lunch. I have no idea if anyone was injured," one caller said.
But the callers remained focused as they described what was happening and the shooter who, according to one caller, was wearing what resembled a black trench coat.
"I saw him shooting the gun into the air and then toward the building," another caller said.
A short time later, Orange County sheriff's investigators arrested Alvaro Castillo, 19, of Hillsborough, outside the school. At the time, authorities said, he had two rifles that he allegedly fired at least eight times at the school.
Two students were injured.
Authorities later found ammunition, weapons and homemade pipe bombs in his van.
Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said that Castillo also confessed to killing his father, Rafael Huezo Castillo, before the school shooting.
Investigators believe Castillo also sent a homemade videotape and a letter to The Chapel Hill News just minutes before he pulled into the school's parking lot.
In the tape, Castillo says he his insane, apologizes for the pain he has caused and apparently confesses to his father's slaying, showing off a sheet he says he used to cover his father's corpse.
"I don't know what's going to happen. I might get jailed. I might get tortured. I don't know what's going to happen," Castillo said in the tape. "But it's time. I'm sorry. That's it. Goodbye."
Officials also said that just hours before the shooting, Castillo also sent an e-mail to the principal of Columbine High School, where on April 20, 1999, two Colorado teens killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
Castillo, who faces 10 charges in connection with the shooting and his father's homicide, has publicly admitted an obsession with the Columbine school shooting, the deadliest incident of school violence in U.S. history.
"I was just attracted to it ever since I was 10," he said as he was led into court Thursday morning.
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