CAZENOVIA - Fifteen-year-old Eric Hainstock spent an hour in anger management class at Weston High School on Wednesday, two days before he was charged with murdering the school principal.

The gunfire that killed Principal John Klang early Friday seemed to echo through the rolling hills of rural Cazenovia as residents absorbed the shock of the slaying and the first-degree murder charges.

Some said they were repelled by reports that Hainstock - being held in the Sauk County Jail in Baraboo - told investigators he just wanted someone to listen to his complaints about being tormented by classmates who rubbed up against him and called him "fag" and "faggot."

His special education teacher on Saturday called the claims a "total joke." James Nowak said Hainstock didn't give his anger management counselor a clue of what was to come.

But Nowak, one of three special education teachers at the school, said Hainstock had just finished serving a three-day suspension. Nowak said that about two weeks ago, the student swore at him and, when he fled, threw a stapler at him.

"He said something to me and scared me," Nowak said. "I backed out of the room and got out of there and ran. The stapler flew past my head and hit the wall. He had the stapler open - it cracked the cement."

Police were called, and they released him to the custody of his father, Nowak said.

The teacher said he'd had a nightmare that involved Hainstock on Thursday, the night before the shooting.

"I think some kids might have known what was going on," he said. "I'd heard things up at school. There were a lot of rumors." He wouldn't elaborate.

Concerns since preschool

Hainstock had told a friend a few days earlier that Klang would not "make it through homecoming," referring to festivities planned for the school's homecoming weekend, according to a criminal complaint filed in Sauk County Circuit Court.

Officials had been concerned about Hainstock since preschool, interviews and documents revealed.

In a criminal child abuse complaint against Shawn Hainstock, Eric's father, filed five years ago, Sauk County prosecutors said the boy "has a medical condition affecting (his) behavior and that the child's family can no longer afford the medication or counseling (he) needs for his condition." As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, Shawn Hainstock pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of battery.

Years ago, Nowak said, the boy's preschool teacher and a Reedsburg elementary school teacher had been worried about him. "They had concerns way back then" about drawings Hainstock made and other things, Nowak said.

Children from preschool to 12th grade attend the school that houses the high school near Cazenovia, a community of about 300 people about 70 miles northwest of Madison.

Hainstock told police he gunned down Klang before classes began Friday because he was upset with a reprimand Klang had given him. He was facing an in-school suspension for having tobacco in school Thursday, the criminal complaint said.

He told police he was also upset because he felt teachers didn't stop students who harassed him, the complaint said.

But Nowak said the youth was unlikely to have been the butt of jokes. "He wasn't picked on," he said. "He was the one who would have picked on people."

The description of Hainstock as victimized is "a total joke," he said. "We stand up for these kids (special education students) as much as possible. We are advocates for the kids. If they are being picked on, we try to stop it."

Debra O'Rourke, who is defending Hainstock along with Catherine Ankenbrandt, said she wouldn't comment until after that. Ankenbrandt didn't respond to phone messages seeking her comment. O'Rourke and Ankenbrandt are with the state public defender's office in Baraboo.

Klang was shot in the head, chest and leg, and died hours later at a hospital in Madison because of bleeding from the abdominal wound, authorities said.

Hainstock has been charged as an adult in the slaying.

His bail hearing has been set for 2:30 p.m. Monday.

Sgt. Lewis Lange of the Sauk County Sheriff's Office said Hainstock was interviewed by his attorneys on Friday night and was being held in a cell by himself.

Hainstock's parents had not been to see the boy, but typically inmates at the jail aren't allowed visitors until after they've had a bail hearing, Lange said.

Efforts to contact Hainstock's family members Saturday by phone and in person were unsuccessful.

'Behavioral situation'

Nowak said he'd been Hainstock's teacher for a year or two. He said Hainstock was initially placed in the special education program because he was thought to have a learning disability.

"Later it became an emotional and behavioral situation," Nowak said.

Eric Schneider, 14, is an eighth-grade student at Weston who first met Hainstock when he was in kindergarten and Hainstock was in first grade in Reedsburg. He said Hainstock came to Weston in the sixth grade but was held back so the two were in the same grade.

"We just did childish things, play fight, talk during class, normal stuff that kids usually get yelled at for," said Schneider, who is repeating the eighth grade this year.

Schneider said that Hainstock got picked on a lot, but also picked on kids and would push and fight with other children.

"Eric dished it out and went after other people," Schneider said.

Schneider said that he last saw Hainstock at the end of his eighth-hour social studies class on Thursday. That's when Klang came to talk to Hainstock about something.

"I always thought he got along with Mr. Klang. If Eric had trouble they would talk, and things would get better."

Gun came from home

The teen's home is surrounded by quiet beauty, including Amish farms and an Amish schoolhouse about a mile away on Quaker Valley Road. But Hainstock's gray two-story home - on Birdd Drive off Highway G about 7 miles from Weston school - stands in stark contrast. The yard filled with junked sport utility vehicles, snowmobiles, boats and other debris.

On the faded wooden deck on the front of the house there's a double chair swing with a ripped awning and a broken white washing machine. Most of the windows appeared to be covered not with curtains, but with blankets.

A small dog in the front bay window was the only movement from the home Saturday.

The criminal complaint said that Hainstock used a screwdriver Friday morning to pry open a gun cabinet in the home and remove the shotgun. He also found a hidden key and used that to open his father's locked bedroom and get the handgun.

Prayer service

David Wermund is a 1988 graduate from Weston and is president of the School Board. He doesn't know if there was more that could have been done for Hainstock.

"I can't say. I don't know, I haven't talked to Jim (Nowak) or anybody that deals with Eric on a day-to-day basis," Wermund said. "We haven't had a chance to sit down and see if there's something we may have missed with Eric."

Friday night Klang's church, St. Anthony de Padua Catholic Church, conducted an impromptu prayer service.

"People are shocked," Pastor Andre Panek said Saturday. "Because mostly in my parish, we look at the situation with faith, and we forgave this murder. We forgave him. We prayed for him too, last night."

An eyewitness account of Friday's shooting

This account of Friday's shooting at Weston High School was given by witnesses who spoke to State Journal reporters and to investigators who filed a criminal complaint charging Eric Hainstock with first-degree murder:

The first person to see Hainstock at the school Friday morning was the building custodian, Dave Thompson. Thompson, who has worked at the school for 23 years, figured Hainstock was just late when he saw him pull up in his truck shortly after classes began.

But Thompson was alarmed by what he saw next.

From inside the main door of the high school, where he was speaking with social studies teacher Chuck Keller, Thompson saw Hainstock walk purposefully across the parking lot with a shotgun in his hands.

Hainstock flung open the door and Keller immediately confronted him, asking what he intended to do with his gun.

"'I'm going to kill somebody,'" Thompson remembered Hainstock saying, calmly pointing the muzzle inches from Keller's face.

Thompson, a lifelong hunter, seized the barrel of the gun and swung the slightly built Hainstock around, wrenching the gun from his grasp.

Moving away, Hainstock started fumbling with his clothes as if reaching for another gun. Thompson yelled at Keller that Hainstock was probably still armed. "We both went in a hurry both ways," he said, Thompson out the front door with the shotgun to call 911, and Keller into the main office to call a "code blue" over the school's public address system.

The code was the prompt for teachers to lock their rooms, turn out the lights and move students away from doors and windows.

Hainstock pulled out a .22 caliber handgun and Klang stepped into the hallway to block his path.

Klang ordered Hainstock to stop.

Checking to see what the commotion was, teacher Corey Brunett looked out of his classroom to see Klang and Hainstock wrestling. Klang was behind Hainstock holding his right arm.

At some point, three shots were fired.

After Brunett checked on his students, he returned to his door to see Klang and Hainstock fall to the floor, with a bleeding Klang holding Hainstock in a bear hug. As others ran to help subdue Hainstock, Burnett saw Klang sweep the gun away, despite being shot three times, in the head, left leg and chest.

Hainstock was arrested moments later.