No friends Richard AspinwallIn which one of the two teachers died shoot at Georgia’s Apalachee High School, math teacher and football coach gave emotional interviews Thursday describing his character.
Nick Bach, who had known Aspinwall for more than a decade and coached football with him, CNNThat’s what Erin Burnett was thinking Wednesday morning after reaching out to check in on her friend via text.
“Honestly, at that moment, I thought the odds must be very slim. It might not be that. There’s probably 2000 kids, a thousand other people walking around that building, you know. We’re down to one in 3,000, but those are still crazy odds. No way,” he said.
“And then maybe 20, 30 minutes later I started getting a few letters from fellow coaches saying we’re all working together. We were all really close, and a couple of guys started saying they were hearing maybe it was him and then I just started shaking and was speechless and didn’t know what to do for a few hours – mixed messages at that point.
That’s when Burnett informed Bach about how the gunman had allegedly made threats at another school, prompting an investigation, and how his father still went. Gift him a gun As he used it at school, Bach said it was difficult to understand.
“I honestly haven’t been able to process much of it. Definitely gets a little angry. Kind of turns my stomach,” he said. “At the same time, I heard it a few seconds ago and I’m really here to honor my friend and how great he was.”
Colin Gray, father of the gunman, was arrested Late Thursday. He is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Bach, who was also at Aspinwall’s wedding, went on to describe him as “the best”.
“The most beautiful soul you’ll ever meet who would go above and beyond for everyone around him,” he said. “For the students in his math classes, for the teachers in his department, for the coaches—I mean, you never had to ask him to do anything. He only did it because he just wanted everyone around him to be great. And I think that was his call. It was in his DNA to help everyone around him, so he was very good at it. He just admired and loved us all. That’s why we’re all so broken right now.”
In the next hour AC360Matt Tanner, another friend of Aspinwall’s who has known him since middle school, similarly emphasized how they were each other’s best man in their marriage, describing him as “like a brother to me”.
“He always had a smile on his face. He had a laugh that was contagious,” Tanner said. “He was just amazing.”
“Family was really big for him,” he said of Aspinwall, who has a wife and two daughters. “And you know most people always want to find a way to leave you better than you found it and do better than what was done for you, and he really took that to heart. He played with Barbies, he Doing hair, sipping teacups, he was on the floor. He was a very present, involved father to the girls.
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