Students at Georgia high school describe 'haunting moment' after suspect opened fire

WINDER, Ga. — Sophomore Cameron Leroy was in class Wednesday morning when an unfamiliar noise pulsated from the hallway just after 10 a.m.

When it didn't stop, his teacher at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, took action: He ordered students to crouch down in the corners of the classroom. He turned off the lights, locked the door and propped up a large touchscreen board to block the entrance.

For 30 terrifying minutes, the students hid motionless, and Leroy prayed for safety as the barrage of gunfire was eventually replaced by emergency sirens and the shouts of police officers.

"It was this very haunting moment for everyone," Leroy, 15, said on NBC News Now.

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Once home, he said, he was "still in a state of shock." But the chaotic events sunk in when he learned one of those killed was Richard Aspinwall, his geometry teacher and an assistant football coach.

A 14-year-old student is suspected of fatally shooting two teachers and two students and wounding one teacher and eight other students before he surrendered to two school resource officers, authorities said.

Investigators are working to establish a motive for why the suspect, who was charged with four counts of felony murder as an adult, allegedly carried out the attack at Apalachee High, whose students are now the latest to confront how seemingly random gun violence can shatter their small community — and how years spent practicing active shooter drills in school turned into a harrowing lesson of survival.

Apalachee High School students at a vigil for victims of the shooting in Winder, Ga., on Sept. 4. Joshua L. Jones / USA Today Network

"Never," Leroy said of thinking that the active shooter trainings would be applied in a real-life scenario.

"Even when it happened, we were prepared, but it's not something you're going to expect in a normal day of school," he added. "You think you're going to go to school for seven hours, learn, come home to your family."

Law enforcement officials said they began receiving calls about an active shooter at around 10:20 a.m. at Apalachee High School, located in a rural town of about 19,000 people between Atlanta and Athens. A lockdown was in place and parents were told to avoid the school until the scene could be secured.

Isaiah Hooks, 15, said he was in science class with about 20 students when the shooting occurred. He could hear screams, and the class mobilized to an area that connected to another classroom where they could shelter in place.

He would later learn that one of the victims was a classmate, and another was Aspinwall, his defensive coach on the school football team.

"Some of us are still pretty shaken up," Hooks said Thursday. "It's going to take a while for us to get over all this."

Jaden Hunter, 17, said he was on the computer in engineering class when the computers showed an alert that the school was on lockdown. Screams were coming from down the hall. At first, he said, he didn't know if it was a surprise drill, but his teacher told the class to "go hide and get into a safe place."

His classmates pulled out their phones to text their friends. Hunter said a friend closer to the shooting wrote him: "There was blood everywhere."

At a news conference Wednesday, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said teachers at Apalachee for the past week have had access to a new type of technology that allows them to press a button on their IDs to alert law enforcement of a possible active shooter. Smith said that was utilized in this case.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Northeast Georgia Health System said it not only treated physical injuries, but also multiple people with symptoms of panic attacks and anxiety.

School was canceled for the rest of the week and grief counselors were being made available.

Ariel Bowling was about to leave her classroom with a friend to go to a vending machine when the shooting began nearby. The pair raced back inside the classroom.

Panicked, Bowling said she called her mother, who told her not to joke about an active shooter but quickly realized her daughter was serious.

Tabitha Bowling said she told her daughter to hide in the corner and listen to directions.

"At that time, I heard five gunshots and then the phone went dead," Tabitha Bowling, recounting the events with her daughter on NBC's "TODAY" show, said Thursday. She added: "I was very scared."

Eventually, after an all-clear was given, Ariel Bowling exited the classroom and walked past a body covered with a sheet and someone with a gunshot wound to her leg.

Frantic parents were able to reconnect with their children in the school's football field.

A day after the shooting, Ariel Bowling said she is traumatized and told her mom that she is too scared to return to school. Some students at Apalachee have expressed the need for more security measures.

"You're basically never safe anywhere," Bowling said, "and no matter if there are cops in the school, there's still no safety at all."

Curtis Bunn reported from Winder and Erik Ortiz from New York.