In final days, friends and ex-girlfriend sensed mounting despair

March 18, 2001

Life was closing in on Charles "Andy" Williams, and no one could tell what the isolated 15-year-old would do about it.

In the days leading up to the Santana High School shooting, Williams was growing more and more distraught -- bullied by classmates, heartsick over losing his girlfriend and, as always, pining for his small Maryland hometown.

"You could clearly tell he was getting progressively unhappy," said Kathleen Seek, 16, the former girlfriend from Brunswick, Md., who traded chat-room e-mail messages with Williams four days before the shooting.

"It was getting worse and worse."

Friends say Williams was lonely and depressed the Monday morning he walked onto campus and casually opened fire, fatally wounding two students and wounding 13 others before surrendering to authorities.

But no one saw the depth of the boy's despair -- not his father, not Seek or anyone else he kept in touch with since leaving Brunswick in 1999, and not the friends at school he told about his plan to shoot up the campus.

Only now are psychologists and investigators piecing together the events that culminated at 9:20 a.m. March 5, when Williams shot Bryan Zuckor in the back of the head, then fired more than two dozen rounds at will.

In retrospect, some of the stories, the threats, the innocuous exchanges of conversation might seem like clues or hints at what was to come. At the time, no one was listening.

The boy awoke early March 1. Before getting ready for school, he signed on to his computer to see if his friends in Maryland were around. Three thousand miles away, Seek was surprised to find Williams online.

Although the topic of the 20-minute exchange between the one-time couple was not unusual -- Williams' unhappiness -- the boy's deepening angst was remarkable.

Pressure was building. He hated school. He hated California. His yearning for Maryland was growing more profound. His comfort zone was slipping away, his friends back East were moving on and even Seek was dating someone else.

"His world was going on without him," Seek said. "I know that was hard for him."

Outward anxiety was turning into an inward depression. Time and distance were taking their toll.

"He said he just wanted to disappear," the girl recalled. "He was really down -- more than I had ever known him to be. He sounded suicidal. That scared me. . . . I just got off line because I didn't want to hear any more."

A couple of hours later, Williams and an older boy acted out a skit in their morning drama class, both playing monkeys picking lice from their hair, senior Billy Millsap said.

The next day, drama teacher Patricia DiPuma reminded Williams in front of the class of an assignment coming due. He was supposed to create a talk-show skit, write up dialogue and memorize the lines.

Williams told DiPuma he had left the work at home. But when she asked him to recite a few lines, he was unable to do so. The teacher did not raise her voice, but told him to have the play ready by Monday.

After school, Williams gathered with friends in a "smoke circle" -- getting high and trying to fit in. His skateboard had been stolen twice in the past month, but Williams still hung around the Woodglen Vista skate park.

Williams was never fully accepted, even by this clique, known on campus as the "druggies." They smoked pot, but Williams usually had enough after one hit. When the joint came back around to him, he nearly always declined.

A few in the circle teased Williams on Friday afternoon by filling a pipe with marijuana seeds rather than the herb, and offering it to their classmate. It was a small slight, but the joke was plain enough.

"He smoked it, and they made fun of him for it," one boy said.

Alienated yet again, Williams soon began talking about shooting people at school, said Jessika Pierce, a 13-year-old who hung around the group of pot smokers.

"He kept telling everyone: 'Just watch. I'll do it. It'll happen,' " she said. "They thought he was joking, because everyone else at the skate park would talk hard and joke around."

The independent son of a single father, Williams spent most of his time away from the small apartment in a nondescript complex a mile or so south of Santana High.

When the weekend rolled around, Williams made plans to spend Saturday night at a friend's. He joined classmate A.J. Gilbert at the mall in the afternoon, leaving his bicycle and a sweat shirt at the Gilbert home.

Later, both boys landed at Joshua Stevens' house for the night. There, Williams made more threats, then assured them he was only kidding. "The guns are locked up," they quoted their friend as saying.

The trio stayed up late playing guitar and listening to music. It was after 3 a.m. when they nodded off to sleep.

By Sunday morning, word of Williams' persistent threats to bring a gun to school on Monday had reached Chris Reynolds, the boyfriend of Joshua's mother, who lives at the Stevens' home.

Reynolds told reporters immediately after the shooting that he confronted Williams, and that the boy assured him it was just talk.

"I told him this better not be true. I was going to call the sheriff," said Reynolds, who was satisfied the threats were merely idle ones.

Teen-agers playing at some bike trails near the skate park Sunday afternoon also heard Williams threaten to shoot up the schoolyard, and did nothing.

Some friends said Williams' father never came home Sunday, that the boy spent the night alone. Only later did Williams tell investigators that he was in his room, counting bullets and saving one for himself.

Daybreak on March 5 was cold and gloomy. It had rained over the weekend and more was on the way. In Washington, D.C., lawmakers were vowing to investigate last-minute pardons granted by former President Clinton.

An hour before class, Gilbert grabbed Williams' bike and sweat shirt and headed toward his friend's apartment. He met up with Williams and they walked north to school.

The usual crowd was milling around outside Jack In The Box, trading stories from the weekend before shuffling across the street to campus.

About 8:45, Amanda Lingenfelter was watching Williams sit by himself on a curb across the parking lot, smoking. Someone passed by, and Williams spoke with the boy briefly. Mostly, he was alone.

A group of students approached Williams. Some of them patted him down, checking to see if he planned to make good on his threats. But they found no gun and went on ahead.

The campus was buzzing by 9:20, five minutes before the next class. Gilbert and Williams walked into the small quad together, nothing out of the ordinary. Gilbert heard his girlfriend beckon, said "Later" to his friend and headed off.

Williams went into the bathroom for the last time.

Not far off, Chas Tessman ran into his buddy Bryan Zuckor. "He was going to the bathroom, and I was going to get a drink of water," the 16-year-old said later, his eyes welling up with tears.

" 'Hey, what's up? How's it going?' " Chas remembered asking Bryan, a tall, gangly boy who liked to ride his bike and explore the hiking trails above his Santee neighborhood.

"Oh, pretty good," Bryan answered. "Maybe I'll see you during lunch," Chas said, heading for the fountain. "OK," he replied.

They were idle words between friends, but Chas will hang on them always.

Five minutes later, the teen-age gunman was confronted by deputies before he could carry out his suicide plot.

Two weeks after the ambush, Williams is settling into a routine at Juvenile Hall, where he occupies Room 11 of "Super Max," a 30-room wing for boys charged with the most serious crimes.

"He still has wide eyes and isn't quite sure of what's going on," said a probation officer who supervises boys at Juvenile Hall. "He tries to stay out of the limelight. He hasn't shown interest in anything."

The department is taking special care to make sure nothing happens to Williams, the youngest boy in the high-security area. Guards check on him every 15 minutes.

Williams spends his mornings talking with attorneys and a psychologist before heading to the school inside Juvenile Hall in the afternoons. So far, he is a model prisoner who responds well to commands and keeps to himself.

"Other kids here are still pretty much in awe of him," the probation officer said. But "he's pretty much isolated within himself. . . . He's not making any friends."