The late father of the teen who authorities say opened fire inside a Santa Clarita high school — killing two students and injuring at least three on his birthday — was an avid hunter who used to “make bullets,” according to new reports.
The gunman, identified in multiple outlets as 16-year-old Nathaniel Berhow, allegedly stormed into Saugus High School just before classes began Thursday and opened fire with a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol before turning the gun on himself, police said.
He survived the self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head and is listed in “grave condition.”
The alleged shooter’s father, Mark Berhow, died in December 2017 from a heart attack but a “history of chronic alcoholism” contributed to his death, the Los Angeles County Coroners Office told The Post Thursday.
“His dad – I know he used to make bullets, so I’m assuming he had guns and stuff like that,” Ryan McCracken, 20, a former childhood friend of Berhow, told KTLA.
Berhow was “an avid sportsman” who “loved big game hunting and fishing of all kinds,” according to an obituary for him.
Sources in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told The Los Angeles Times that the elder Berhow was a hunter and owned several weapons.
He hunted elk, and his son would sometimes tag along, neighbor Jared Axen, 33, a registered nurse, told the Times.
Axen told KTLA that he believes the teen was “the one who had found his father’s body inside the house” when he died.
Two years before his death, the elder Berhow had been arrested amid a domestic dispute with the boy’s mother.
In 2016, shortly before Mark Berhow died, the alleged shooter’s mom sued him for custody of their children, according to Trellis.
Nathaniel Berhow is a half-Japanese student whose family lives in Valencia, California, about two miles from the school.
Classmates described him as a “quiet kid” who they’d never expect to be capable of a school shooting.
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