BENTON, Ky. (AP) – They ran silently, too stunned to shout.
Some of the children ran into classrooms to hide from the boy with the gun. Some ran out of the building, into the fields, across the streets, through the doors of nearby businesses.
“No one screamed,” said 16-year-old Alexandria Caporali, recounting the moment her high school became the site of the latest American mass shooting. “It was almost completely silent as people just ran.”
Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope, both 15, were killed and another 18 people injured when a classmate opened fire Tuesday morning in the school’s busy atrium, a common area in the center of Marshall County High School, where several hallways meet and children gather before classes.
The trauma consumed the rural town of about 4,300 people, where nearly everyone has a connection to the school. Parents left cars on both sides of an adjacent road, desperately trying to find their teenagers; business owners pulled fleeing children to safety; a state trooper rushed to the school, terrified he would find his own daughter among the dead.