The father of the Pakistani exchange student killed in the Santa Fe High School massacre sent her to the Lone Star State because he believed she would be safer in Texas than in her home country.
“We used to think that our kids aren’t safe in a place like Pakistan, that things aren’t right here but such bad things don’t happen in America, and that my daughter would be safe over there,” Abdul Aziz Sheikh told NBC News after his daughter Sabika’s funeral in Karachi Wednesday.
The 17-year-old was in the US for a six-month-long State Department youth study-abroad program known as YES. She was one of eight students killed when Dimitrios Pagourtzis opened fired in art class last week.
“My heart drowns when I think of the incident,” he told the Guardian. “My daughter who was scared of needles got killed in a hail of bullets.”
Sheikh said he was watching the news the day of the shooting when he saw live footage showing Santa Fe High School.
“Then I called her, and she didn’t pick up. Sabika always picked up, so I knew something wasn’t right. That’s when I started getting scared,” he told the New York Times.
“This is a form of terrorism. It shouldn’t happen anywhere: not in America, not in Pakistan,” he said.
The grieving dad called on the Trump administration to take concrete steps to keep weapons out of the hands of troubled teens.
“I expect the Trump administration to make a law for this and I hope they will make this law in the name of Sabika Aziz Sheikh,” he told NBC.
His daughter had planned to return home in a few weeks for Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday marking the end of Ramadan.
On Friday morning, just before the gunman entered the school, she sent a Snapchat message to her best friend Rumsha Munawar in Karachi.
“19 days until I’m back!” it said.
The friend questioned how such a young student could both get guns and bring them into a school.
“In Pakistan, even if someone attacks a school, it’s someone from the outside,” she said. “It’s never one of our own students. I still can’t understand why someone would do that.”