(CBS Los Angeles)
November 15, 2019 at 8:06 am
SANTA CLARITA — Nathan Berhow was on the honor roll and track team at Saugus High School, grew up as a Boy Scout, and had a girlfriend – so his role in the deadly shooting at Saugus High School is a mystery to all who knew him.
The 16-year-old Saugus High School student was identified by CBS News as the gunman in the shooting that killed a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. Nathan remains in grave condition from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A motive is still not known for the shooting and Nathan, who had a girlfriend and was active in school life, does not seem to fit the stereotypical profile of a school shooter – depressed and angry at the world.
Jared Axen, the family’s next door neighbor, said he would never have imagined this would happen, much less involving Nathan.
“He always seemed to have people around him in his life who really loved him,” Axen said. “I think he forgot that.”
Axen said he had held Nathan as a baby, taught him chess when he was in middle school, and considered him to be a younger brother. However, Axen said Nathan did struggle with the death of his father, who passed away of heart failure a couple of years ago. Nathan’s father had been an avid hunter who struggled with alcohol for years and was arrested in 2015 on suspicion of attempted battery on his wife.