Several children have recounted what they went through when a 14-year-old opened fire on Apalachee High School, in Georgia.
Two students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie, were killed during the violence on Wednesday, while at least nine other people were taken to hospital—all of whom are expected to survive.
The teenager believed to be the shooter, Colt Gray, is in police custody. He is set to be charged with murder and tried as an adult.
One child, also 14, told how close he was to being shot himself. Speaking WPRI.com, he recounted how he started running when he first heard the gunshots.
“I ran to the back of the classroom, I dived behind the desk and my teacher got in front of me like he was guarding me,” the boy said. “The gunshots were so close to me, like my ears started ringing real bad. The whole classroom was smoking and everything.”
He went on: “When [the shooter] finally got out of the classroom, my teacher started barricading the door with desks and bookshelves and all that.
“And then I had got up, and when I had got up, I saw one of my classmates on the ground, bleeding so bad.”
The boy added: “It just keep replaying back in my head—I just thank God that I wasn’t the one that got hit, you know.
“In the midst of all of it happening, I was just thanking God, because, you know, he had this hands around me. Because I could have been the one that got hit.”
A different boy said he was listening to music with his Airpods “on full blast” when the gunshots started.
He told FOX 5: “My friend pushed me to the ground, I thought it was fake until I heard more gunshots and screaming.”
The kid went on to explain leaving the room he was in once the shooting was over, with his hands up under the instruction of police.
“We walked past and there was a room and then there was a body and there was like a gun laying on the ground, with bullets and blood.”
A little girl explained how multiple people “thought it was a joke at first” because they often do drills.
It was only when a red light went on that she and the kids she was with “realized it was for real,” she told FOX 5, added that there were “police everywhere and a chase going on in the halls.”
“Our math teacher got shot and he was just laying there like in blood and everything,” she said.
Mourners pray during a candlelight vigil for the slain students and teachers at Apalachee High School on Wednesday. A student opened fire at Apalachee High School, killing four people.
AP
The same girl also spoke to ABC News, describing how she felt. “I was scared, I had so much fear” she said, “I am still shaking, like I was so scared, my feelings were so heightened—I cried too.”
She said she was “scared to go back” to school, adding: “I don’t feel safe going back there for a while, I definitely will feel like scared going back into that school.
“What I saw coming out of that school, it’s hard to get out of my head—that body right there and especially my math teacher.”
Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have shared messages about the tragedy, along with their running mates.
During her visit to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Harris interrupted her speech about economic policies and said: “It is just outrageous that every day in the United States of America, parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive.”
She went on: “They are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, yet some part of their big, beautiful minds is worried about a shooter breaking through the door. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
In a post on Truth Social, former President Trump wrote, “Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA. These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
