He was “a young man that was ready to kill anybody that he could,” she said in an interview with ABC News. Ms. Tuff kept him engaged throughout the ordeal. The gunman also held other employees hostage.

Image Credit... The New York Times

“I just started telling him my life story and what was going on with me,” Ms. Tuff said.

When the police arrived, the gunman stepped outside of the building and fired four to six shots, and went back inside, the police said. An officer returned fire. Ms. Tuff said he wanted to go back outside but she told him to empty his pockets and backpack and to put his weapons down. “He got down on the floor, but when the police officers came in, he was actually laying on the floor with his hands behind his back,” she said.

Chief Alexander said that at this point, “He did not put up a fight whatsoever.”

Inside the school, which is in a wooded, working-class neighborhood just east of the Atlanta city limits, doors were barricaded and students hid under desks. Some said they thought they were participating in a fire drill. Others heard the shots.

The man’s car was parked in front of the school, and a police dog detected explosives, Chief Alexander said. So officers herded children to the back of the school and cut a hole in a chain-link fence on the property.