A lockdown warning flashed on the screen in Stephen Kreinbuhl’s classroom at Apalachee High School as the shooting began.
Mr. Kraienbuhl, a world history teacher, said he heard at least 10 shots Wednesday morning, as the worst episode of school violence in Georgia history rang out from around the corner from his room.
Within minutes, four people — two students and two teachers — were killed on the campus of Apalachee High School in Winder, about 50 miles from downtown Atlanta. Authorities identified the shooter as a 14-year-old student at the school.
Leniel Arteta, a freshman, said he and other students huddled in the corner of their technology classroom, hands over their heads, after the gunfire broke out. He heard screams, and his teacher’s voice begging the students to be quiet. He said, he was waiting like this for more than an hour.
When Lenil was finally escorted out of the building with his classmates, he saw scads of police officers. He also saw loose shoes everywhere, but didn’t know why, he said. Mr. Kraenbuhl, 26, said he passed out in a “pool of blood.”
Greg Mann, an Apalachee High School parent, told NBC affiliate 11Alive in Atlanta that many of the students who fled to the football field left their phones and keys inside the school. Mr. Mann said he was at the school and was helping to reunite them with their families.
As parents scrambled to be reunited with their children, traffic snarled around the school. Barrow County Democratic Party Chairwoman Shelby Diamond-Alexander said she was handing out bottles of water to some parents who left their cars to walk the final mile and a half to the school. “It’s a mess here,” she said. “People are just trying to get their kids. It’s devastating to our community.”
Lenil was able to find his father, Harvey Arteta, and at 4 p.m., about a mile from campus, the pair were on the side of a road choked with cars. Helicopters hovered above them. Lenil and his father were in shock.
Speaking in Spanish, Leniel said he came to the United States about two years ago from Nicaragua, a country that has experienced intense political violence. But Lenill knew that here, in the United States, there was a special kind of problem to fear at school.
Now, he said, going back to class will be difficult.
Mr. Arteta, 40, seemed equally nervous about sending his son to Apalachee High in the coming days. Because what was to prevent it from happening again? “It’s really complicated, going back,” he said.
Post Students and teachers panicked as soon as the gunshots were heard. appeared first New York Times.