Kentucky mourns victims

BENTON, Ky. -- 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 commons, a busy atrium at 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.

Kentucky State Police commissioner Rick Sanders said authorities would not yet identify the 15-year-old, now in police custody, who he said walked into school armed with a pistol just before 8 a.m. and immediately started firing.

Caporali was eating breakfast in the cafeteria when she heard a shot, turned and saw the teenager with the gun. She knew him as a quiet boy who played music and always seemed happy. After the first shot, she said he seemed to hesitate, but then he fired every bullet in the gun.

Out in the commons, two 16-year-olds, Lexie Waymon and Baleigh Culp, had been laughing and talking about makeup and the homecoming basketball game like ordinary teenagers on an ordinary morning. They heard the first bang, and imagined something equally ordinary, like a heavy book hitting the floor.

"That's what I expected it to be," Culp said. "Until I saw a body drop on the ground and the bangs continued. There was bullets flying everywhere."

Fear momentarily seized Waymon.

"I couldn't move. I got up and tried to run, but I fell. I heard someone hit the ground. It was so close to me," she said. She froze, she said. She could see only blackness -- for a full minute, she guesses. Then she came to and ran.

Waymon did not stop running, even though her chest hurt. One phrase ran on repeat through her mind: "I can't believe this is happening. I cannot believe this is happening." She didn't stop until she made it to a McDonald's, more than a mile from school.

Culp was running, too. She ran to the highway, hearing shot after shot behind her. She was still running, unsure what to do, when a man reached out from the door of a business and pulled her inside, where dozens of other students were hiding.

"They was running and crying and screaming," said Mitchell Garland, who owns the cleaning company where the girl took refuge. He estimated that 50 to 100 students who ran from the school huddled there, eventually including his own 16-year-old son.

"Everyone is just scared. Just terrified for their kids," Garland said.

Inside school, the boy kept firing, said Caporali, who ran into a classroom.

"It was one right after another -- bang, bang, bang, bang, bang," she said, until he ran out of ammunition.

Then he took off running, trying to get away, she said. He was soon apprehended and led away in handcuffs.

But by then, more than a dozen had been shot and others were injured as they ran from the gunfire. Holt died at the scene and Cope died after being taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Five others remained in critical condition late Tuesday.

Secret Holt said her daughter Bailey was a "perfect sweet soul." She also said the "horrific act of violence" is "just unbearable" for her family.

Hours after the shooting, Benton residents gathered in a church. They were reminded that God had not forsaken them, and told not to ask "what did anyone do to deserve this?"

The case against the suspect will begin in juvenile court, which is closed to the public and the records sealed under Kentucky law. Prosecutors will request to move it to adult court, at which point the details would no longer be secret.

The teen is being held at a regional juvenile jail in Paducah, Kentucky, about a half-hour away, authorities said, and he has been appointed an attorney.

Word of the shooting spread quickly around town, and people rushed toward the school.

Marshall County attorney Jeff Edwards heard the news from a friend and immediately drove to the building. He and his wife both graduated from the school, as did their children.

He saw teenagers running in every direction. He said his heart broke for the ordeal he knows they must endure.

He took office in 1997, the year a student opened fire in a school in Paducah, killing three and injuring five. It was two years before the fatal attack at Columbine High School in Colorado, before mass school shootings became all too common. It left scars across the state.

"This is something that they will never forget," he said. "It will be with them forever."