SANTA FE, Texas — A substitute teacher who relatives say had a "lust for life" and a foreign exchange student from Pakistan are among the first confirmed victims of mass shooting at a Texas high school.
- Cynthia Tisdale, Sabika Sheikh among those who died during a mass shooting at Santa Fe High School
- Tisdale was a substitute teacher
- Sheikh was a Pakistani exchange student
- A total of 10 people have died and at least 13 others are injured
Among those injured Friday are a school resource officer and a sophomore baseball player.
A seventeen-year-old gunman is being held on a capital murder charge after authorities say he fatally shot 10 people and wounded at least 10 others at his high school in Santa Fe, about 30 miles southeast of Houston.
RELATED: Santa Fe shooting suspect charged with capital murder, held without bond
Here are some of their stories:
CYNTHIA TISDALE
Family members confirmed that substitute teacher Cynthia Tisdale was among the victims killed in the shooting.
Tisdale’s niece, Leia Olinde, said Tisdale was like a mother to her and helped her shop for wedding dresses last year.
“She helped me put it on, she helped fix my hair,” Olinde said through tears.
“She was wonderful. She was just so loving,” said Olinde, 25. “I’ve never met a woman who loved her family so much.”
She said Tisdale was married to her husband for close to 40 years and that the two had three children and eight grandchildren.
Tisdale’s house was the center for family gatherings, and she loved cooking Thanksgiving dinner and decorating her house, Olinde said.
Olinde’s fiance, Eric Sanders, said of Tisdale that “words don’t explain her lust for life and the joy she got from helping people.”
SABIKA SHEIKH
A Pakistani foreign exchange student is among those killed in the shooting, according to a leader at a program for foreign exchange students and the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Megan Lysaght, manager of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study Abroad program (YES), sent a letter to students in the program confirming that Sabika Sheikh was killed in the shooting.
“Please know that the YES program is devastated by this loss and we will remember Sabika and her families in our thoughts and prayers,” Lysaght wrote.
She said the program would be holding a moment of silence for the girl, who is pictured beaming in a shirt that says “Texas” in a photo being shared on social media.
Lysaght declined further comment when contacted by The Associated Press and referred calls to a State Department spokesman.
The Pakistan Embassy in Washington, D.C., identified Sabika as a victim of the shooting on Twitter and wrote that “our thoughts and prayers are with Sabika’s family and friends.”
The Pakistan Association of Greater Houston said on Facebook that Sabika was due to go back home to Pakistan for Eid al-Fitr, a three-day holiday that marks the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
“May Allah bless her soul and may she RIP,” the statement said.
Pakistani businessman Abdul Aziz Sheikh says he learned of the tragedy unfolding at a high school in Texas when he turned on the TV after iftar, the fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Realizing it was the school where his 18-year-old daughter, Sabika, was an exchange student, he flipped through channels trying to learn more and left her messages, but she didn't reply.
He called his daughter's friends, but they weren't responding either. It was only when he got reached the exchange program that he got the bad news: Sabika Khan was among the 10 people killed in Friday's mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, southeast of Houston.
Fighting back tears, her father told The Associated Press on Saturday in Karachi that Sabika was due home in about three weeks for the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. He says he thought she would be safe in the U.S.