Seeking Reasons for Rampage

SAN DIEGO —  The father of accused Santana High School shooter Charles “Andy” Williams says his son was tormented by bullies but that the teenager has not offered any explanation for the rampage that left two students dead and 13 other people wounded.

“He doesn’t know why,” Charles “Jeff” Williams told Diane Sawyer, co-anchor of ABC’s “PrimeTime,” in an interview to be broadcast tonight. “I’ve asked and he doesn’t answer. He just looked down and shook his head.”

In the interview, the first granted by the elder Williams since the March 5 shooting, he says his 15-year-old son was victimized by constant bullying. Prosecutors are prepared to dispute that when the case goes to trial.

“They . . . would beat him up . . . would turn their cigarette lighters on, get them hot, and they would just surround him and press them on his skin and burn him,” Williams said.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kris Anton, interviewed by The Times, said that after talking to hundreds of the teenager’s fellow students and friends, investigators have found “just no evidence to support the theory that he was bullied.”

Anton said she believes that the bully theory has gained currency because it seems to help explain why a teenager with no criminal record could suddenly explode and fire 30 bullets randomly at his fellow students.

Williams, 41, a technician at the Balboa Naval Hospital, said nothing in his son’s behavior seemed out of the ordinary on the morning of the shooting.

“I’ve done the best I could as a father to raise my son in a proper way,” he said. “Something happened to make him snap for those 10 minutes. . . . That was not my Andy that was in bed that morning when I went to work that did this.”

Williams, who is divorced, moved to suburban Santee last year after living in Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County. Santana High students who knew his son have said he had fallen in with a group known for smoking, drinking and drug use.

“His eyes were always clear,” said Williams. “[He] never came home smelling of alcohol.”

The criminal case against his son has been delayed while defense attorneys attack the constitutionality of a voter-adopted ballot measure that allows prosecutors to charge juveniles in Superior Court without a fitness hearing in Juvenile Court. An appeals court will hear the challenge Oct. 9.

Williams said he is “racked with sorrow and sadness” for the victims but has not attempted to contact the families of Brian Zuckor and Randy Gordon, the two slain students.

“I feel terrible for the families,” Williams said. “I was just totally devastated to hear that those two families lost their boys that day. . . . I was actually wailing in the car. I think I would have been less hurt if [Andy] were one of the ones that got shot than to find out that he was the one that did this.”

Still, Williams said he believes that his son deserves a chance to redeem himself and should not spend the rest of his life in prison.

“He wants to be a helicopter pilot; he wants to be a probation officer,” Williams said. “He’d like to be a cop. You give him that chance and he might be able to make up for what he’s done.”