To friends and relatives of the suspect in the Tuesday
killing of a high school math teacher in Danvers,
Massachusetts, the arrest of the teen they know is as
shocking as the crime itself.
Before he moved to Massachusetts last spring, Philip
Chism had impressed the people he knew in
Clarksville, Tennessee, where he graduated last
spring from Rossview Middle School. "Great soccer
player -- probably the main reason we won the
league championship last year," Jando Herrera told
CNN affiliate WZTV about Chism, whom he coached
in soccer for two seasons.
"I'm sure any of his teammates would say the same
thing: that he was just the nicest kid on the team,
probably. ... It's completely out of character; it's not
something that I would ever imagine Philip ever, you
know, doing or anything like that ... always the most
respectful kid that I've, you know, had around -- 'yes
sir, no sir.' "
After graduating from middle school, Chism moved
from Tennessee to Danvers, where he appeared to
provoke little concern among his classmates or
others in the town of 26,000 people in a suburb north
of Boston.
Nicole White said she never heard her classmate in
history class at Danvers High School discuss their
math teacher, 24-year-old Colleen Ritzer. "He never
talked about her," she said. "Nothing ever happened.
So it came to a shock to all of us, I think."
White said she saw nothing out of place during her
collaboration with Chism on a history assignment.
"He was always a really, really quiet kid, but he was
nice," she told CNN. "I saw no problems at all."
"He's quiet, just kept to himself -- probably because
he's new to the society but, I mean, he's a good kid,"
said Kyle Cahill, a junior at the school.
A member of Chism's English class, Ariana Edwards,
said Chism had friends, but chose them carefully.
"He wasn't, like, too friendly though," she said. "He,
like, only had certain friends. He wasn't, like,
outgoing to everyone ... in classes he would only talk
to, like, a select few people. And he was new too, so,
like, he didn't have, like, the, like, amount of friends
as everyone else."
Still, she said, he "seemed quiet and reserved, but he
just seemed normal."
Chism didn't drink or do drugs, and he came from a
good family, one of his friends said. He described
Chism as a good athlete who was shy at first but
eventually warmed up to people, adding that he
hadn't been acting strangely lately.Teacher slayings hurt view of schools as safe havens
This friend and others got their first hint that
something had gone awry on Tuesday, when Chism
didn't show up for soccer practice. The team
searched for him after seeing texts that he was
missing.
"We didn't know whether he was like kidnapped or if
he was hurt somewhere, so we went around looking
for him because we cared about him," said a
teammate. "Obviously, he was on the team and we
liked him."
As they and police were looking for him -- and after
Ritzer was killed -- Chism went to the movies, a
source with knowledge of the investigation said.
A few hours later, the lanky young man with closely
cut hair was charged with murder.
Chism's uncle, who still lives in Clarksville, told CNN
affiliate WKRN in Nashville that something may have
provoked his nephew. "Might could have been upset,"
Terrence Chism Blaine said Wednesday. "You know --
teenagers go through that. He's 14, he's growing up
still. That's the only thing that I can imagine. I can't
imagine anything else because he's like a storybook
kid -- a perfect family."
In a telephone interview with CNN, Blaine said the
boy's parents are separated and that the father -- a
former military man -- now lives in Florida.
Asked if the suspect had had behavioral issues, he
said, "No, I don't believe so."
"I think it's insane," classmate Andre Poland told
CNN affiliate WCVB in Boston. "I'm completely
shocked. I don't think Philip would be the type of
person to do this."
Classmate Riley Doyle said she was searching for
answers. "I just want to know why anyone would do
that -- especially to someone who's such a nice and
kind and good-hearted person," she told CNN. "It
doesn't make any sense. Just why?"Herrera said he was reserving judgment about the
former player on his soccer team. "I want to see what
else there is, you know," he said. "I want the whole
story to kind of come out before people really cast a
lot of judgment on the kid."
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