Cops: High School Shooting Suspect Admitted Killing Dad

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. – A teenager suspected in a shooting at a high school that injured two students Wednesday later confessed to killing his father and was charged with murder, authorities said.

Alvaro Rafael Castillo, 19, of Hillsborough told deputies about the slaying after he was taken into custody at Orange High School, the Orange County sheriff said.

Deputies who forced their way into the family's home found Rafael the body of Huezo Castillo, who had been shot to death, Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said.

It was not immediately known when the father died.

As deputies walked the teen to jail, his hands cuffed in front of him, he was asked why he killed his father.

"Sacrifice. The world is cruel," he said. "We all have to sacrifice. Somebody had to put him out of his misery. He abused all of us."

A school district spokeswoman said a former student drove into the school's parking lot at midday and fired a gun at the building. A girl was grazed on the shoulder, and a boy was struck by shattered glass, spokeswoman Anne D'Annunzio said.

The injured girl was treated at a hospital and released, D'Annunzio said. A window at the school was shot out, but D'Annunzio did not know whether the shattered glass caused the boy's minor injuries.

Castillo has not been charged in the school shooting.

Asked why he went to Orange High School, Castillo responded: "Columbine. Remember Columbine."

In 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado before committing suicide in the nation's worst school shooting.

Alvaro Castillo was firing two rifles as deputies approached, Pendergrass said. They later found ammunition, weapons and homemade pipe bombs in his van.

A hearing was scheduled Thursday in Orange County District Court. It was unknown Wednesday evening whether he had a lawyer.

Orange High ninth-grader Philip Mitchell said he was outside when the shooting started about 1 p.m.

"There was a bunch of smoke and they started shooting," said Mitchell, who ran back inside the building.

Denning Best, another high school freshman, was in the cafeteria.

"I saw people running away and all the teachers were telling us it was a lockdown," she said. "It was a little bit freaky."

Students were temporarily barred from leaving both the high school and nearby C.W. Stanford Middle School for their safety, D'Annunzio said.

Buses took students from the campus to a church, where their parents waited to collect them.

Hillsborough is in the Raleigh-Durham area of north-central North Carolina.