Community mourns deadly Iowa school shooting
The Iowa school shooter who killed one sixth grader and injured five was bullied “relentlessly,” according to his former classmates.
Dylan Butler, 17, was named as the gunman who attacked Perry High School in Iowa on Thursday as students returned from their Christmas break.
His former classmates, sisters Yesenia Roeder and Khamya Hall, both 17, said that Butler had been bullied relentlessly since elementary school.
They added that the bullying had escalated recently, when his younger sister started getting picked on, too. Officials at the school didn’t intervene, they said, and that was “the last straw” for the shooter.
“He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment,” Yesenia Roeder Hall said.
Police said the suspect’s motive was being investigated and authorities were looking into “a number of social media posts” he made around the time of the shooting, Des Moines Register reported.
Moments before the shooting, Butler, who was found dead at the scene, posted a video on TikTok captioned “now we wait” and the song “Stray Bullet” by the German band KMFDM accompanied it.
Ahmir Jolliff, the 11-year-old victim of the shooting, is remembered by family and friends as a joyful boy known as “Smiley” at home.
