'My first memory is violence and conflict'

After his arrest Friday on terrorism and other charges, the 19-year-old Forest High School shooter who injured a 17-year-old student and caused panic for scores of children and their parents sat calmly in a room at the Marion County Jail and told his story.

Sky Bouche said he was sorry but he doubted that would change anything for the boy he injured.

As for his own future, he had one word: "Solitary."

He talked about how he was raised, how he got a gun and how the shooting unfolded.

Bouche said he grew up surrounded by violence and mental illness, neglected but not physically abused, and felt the shooting was "pretty much" his only way out of the situation.

"My first memory is violence and conflict," he said. "That's my first memory. And no one will believe me. That's one of the reasons people don't think I'm serious."

He dreamed of joining the U.S. Marine Corps to get away from the chaos around him, Bouche said, but that hope was dashed after, at age 14, he was evaluated for mental health issues under the Baker Act. He said he is not mentally ill.

An adrenaline rush

On Friday morning, Bouche said he woke up, chambered a round in his sawed-off shotgun and then put it away. At that point, Bouche said, all he could feel was “this adrenaline rush.”

“It’s not anger, it’s not hatred, it’s an adrenaline rush that, you know, I’m about to do something. I spend most of my time in a room alone so I’m getting this rush, so that’s what I was feeling,” he said.

He got into his vehicle and drove to Forest, where he had been a student until he dropped out in 2016. The excitement was at a fever pitch, especially when he wasn't confronted by a school resource officer.

“There was no one to stop me like I thought there would be,” Bouche said. He entered the school, went into a bathroom and put on his gloves and a tactical vest with more than a dozen shotgun rounds. He took the shotgun out of the guitar case he had used to carry it.

The students had just entered their classrooms, and Bouche said he was ready.

As soon as he got out of the bathroom, though, the excitement "went to like a dead halt and it felt like this disgusting feeling came over me."

He did not know what to do, he said, "and figured, you know, if people just going to see, oh, this guy coming out with a toy gun, so I didn’t even think the gun would work. That’s why I pointed it at the door."

After firing the shot, he saw a hole but couldn't hear anything right away. He heard someone scream like they were hurt.

But Bouche also said he did not know he had hit anyone until a news reporter asked him about it.

He said he “could’ve kept going,” because there were no officers around. He stopped because a girl was there and she didn’t run from him and she was crying.

That made him throw down the gun, he said, "I could’ve shot her, but I just, I don’t know, I just couldn’t do it."

After that, he surrendered to a teacher.

A private sale arranged online

Bouche said he bought the gun without a background check in a private sale arranged through an online service about a week after the Parkland shooting so he could get it before he turned 21.

He said it was a 1930 shotgun and “there’s no paper on it.”

Bouche acknowledged he should not have had the gun.

But he said the shooting wasn’t planned and he doesn’t have any hatred for people unless he becomes “really depressed.” Bouche said he didn’t have any friends, had a knee injury and was alone at home.

The knee kept him from training in martial arts. With nothing to do, he said, the depression and rage came back.

"I couldn't express it in violence in a martial arts place, so I expressed it in violence in public, which I shouldn't have done,” Bouche said.

Asked if he had a message for others, he said: "I don't think there's anything to say, because it's just a storm, you know, there's nothing you can do to prevent it. You've got a tornado coming through. You don't know if this wind's going to make a tornado or just like, you know, a breeze."

Contact Austin L. Miller at 867-4118, austin.miller@starbanner.com or @almillerosb.