I survived a school shooting

It started as a normal day at then suddenly we heard pop-pop-pop, pop-pop-pop, and I thought, 'That's a weird noise”. I first thought it was the janitor taking down risers and setting up tables."

Next I heard more shots, screaming, crying and whimpering. I heard the janitor yell at the gunman, "'Put the gun down! Put the gun down.'"

Two colleagues and me locked the door of the teacher's room, and the three of us struggled to get in a small closet. We heard everything over the intercom, though it was muffled because our closet door was closed. We just waited in the closet, saying The Lord's Prayer out loud over and over again, and praying for all staff members and the children.

We waited in the closet for "what seemed like forever." Police said the gunman entered at 9:30 a.m. and the shooting was over in about 10 minutes. It was scary when we heard the classroom door jiggle and thought it was the gunman. When the shooting was over, we learned it was the janitor checking to see whether the door was locked.

School staff told me that the gunman entered the principal's office and left after seeing no one there. The nurse and the office worker were hiding under desks, and the nurse could see the gunman's pants leg. The gunman went down the left hallway. Where the school psychologist were killed, and a teacher whom police have not yet identified was wounded, when they went into the hallway from a conference room. The gunman then moved down the hallway to two other first-grade classrooms and fired into both rooms. When he was finished, he fatally shot himself, told the police me. The police arrived at the school and, unaware of who was doing the shooting, apprehended the janitor and another man outside the school. Most of the children and me raced to a firehouse down the street, where "it was chaos."