WEST LIBERTY, Ohio – By all accounts, the 17-year-old student who stormed into his school building Friday morning and fired rounds from his shotgun through windows and walls wasn’t intentionally targeting 16-year-old Logan Cole.

But that’s who he hit.

Logan, a junior who was critically injured, was the only person shot during what the Champaign County sheriff would later say was a tragic and frightening situation that would have been “much, much worse” had staff members at West Liberty-Salem Middle/High School not reacted as quickly as they did.

When deputies arrived within just a couple of minutes of the 7:36 a.m. 911 call of a shooter inside a hallway/common area on the high school side of the building, they found that school employees already had the teen suspected in the shooting pinned to the ground. Authorities have so far refused to identify him.

He was taken into custody and has been charged as a juvenile with felonious assault, Champaign County Prosecutor Kevin Talebi said at a late afternoon media briefing. He said the boy is being held at a juvenile detention center in Marysville, and is due in Champaign County Juvenile Court at 9 a.m. Monday.

Logan is listed in critical condition at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. Superintendent Kraig Hissong said “his family is encouraged by what they’ve heard” about his prognosis.

His family released a statement late Friday: “We are thankful for the Lord’s protective hand on our son. We are also grateful for the outpouring of support from our family, friends, and community. We would like to ask for continued prayers for Logan. Also, we’d like to encourage prayer for the community, the other student, and his family. We are certain they have been deeply hurt as well. We are confident that God has a purpose and plan through this tragedy.”

Champaign County Sheriff Matthew R. Melvin said Logan was a “random victim."

“I think his intent was to harm more," the sheriff said of the teen gunman. "I do believe that.”

The FBI responded to the scene, as did agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Investigators were searching the suspected shooter’s home on Sink Hole Road in rural West Liberty on Friday night. They had earlier towed his Jeep from the school premises.

Melvin would not discuss how much ammunition the teenager had or say more about the weapon other than it was a shotgun.

The West Liberty-Salem schools are all on one campus on Route 68 on the south edge of West Liberty, about an hour west of Columbus and just south of the Logan County line. The Ohio Department of Education says approximately 610 students attend classes in the middle-high school building.

Hissong said the investigation is in its early stages, but that teachers and administrators had been running everything over in their minds all day to see whether they had somehow missed something that might have spurred the violence. He said they came up with nothing.

“No real indications that anything like this would occur,” he said. He said the school district trained two years ago for an active-shooter situation using the ALICE method (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate, and then you are to run, hide or fight), and that it worked as planned.

But not all of the students caught in the chaos Friday morning said it went smoothly. There was widespread panic, yet those in each classroom managed the best they could.

Fifteen-year-old freshman Zachary Glock said he heard the "pop pop pop" of what sounded like gunfire and his science teacher immediately asked, "What was that?"

Before anyone had time to think or react, a student ran into the classroom and said someone was shooting. Everyone huddled in a corner, Glock said.

Glock said he had felt like a sitting duck in that science classroom. So he and some other boys kicked and punched out windows.

"I just knew we needed to get out of there. Why wait for someone to find us?" he said, standing there with his new Nike tennis shoes ruined and his pants covered in mud.

"We just took off running through the fields. We didn't know where to go, but we knew we couldn't stay there."

Glock had left his phone behind at the school, but one of the six friends he was running with had his. They called Glock's dad, who met them at a farmhouse a mile or two from the school.

His mother, Melissa Glock, said the whole morning was terrifying. "You just aren't supposed to have to handle this," she said.

She was among hundreds of parents gathered at the Lions Club Ball Park who stood in a steady, cold rain waiting for students to arrive on buses that were escorted by the State Highway Patrol. The park was jammed, and nearby roads were lined on both sides with cars that parents had simply abandoned in gridlocked traffic as they decided to walk to either the school or the park to get to their children more quickly.

Buses filled with some of the youngest students pulled up to where a three- or four-deep line of parents and relatives and friends waited. Many parents burst into tears when they spotted their children. One girl, either a third- or fourth-grader (a state trooper was announcing what grades were on each bus so that parents could step closer) told her mom that students in her class had “made a castle out of desks” in front of the door.

It was about 12:30 p.m. before the last of the students had been picked up and the park emptied.

The school superintendent said he will decide over the weekend when classes will resume. “We want to give everyone time,” Hissong said.

Selena Avila said she is in no hurry to return. A 17-year-old senior, she had been in the band room waiting for the morning bell when an announcement came over the public-address system that there was an active shooter.

“I thought it was a drill,” she said. The band room doors don’t lock, so she and the other students and their teacher went to the choir room next door. They quickly realized, though, this was real. They saw people running outside, so they all took off out of the building, too. They ran to a tree line at the edge of the property. And there they hid.

“We were quiet,” Avila said. “We didn’t want to be found.”

Avila did text her dad, a former deputy with Logan County who still is on the auxiliary force there. “There’s an active shooter,” she wrote. “I love you.”

Even with all of his law-enforcement training, Benji Avila couldn’t stop the tears from welling Friday as he waited at the park to see his kids.

“It's gut-wrenching, the waiting," he said. "There's no way you can prepare yourself personally for this ...."

Selena wasn’t his only child in the school. Her 17-year-old sister, Chelsea, was there and so was her 16-year-old brother, Garett. Chelsea had been closer to where the shooting happened. She heard the gunshots and knew what they were. Students in her foods class barred the door with tables, huddled together in a corner and waited.

By 12:30 p.m., they were reunited. Later, in the living room of their West Liberty home, there was shock – shock of what had happened, and shock as to who both the shooter and the victim were. But there also was gratitude that their family was together.

"You thank God your kids are safe," Benji Avila said. "But not everybody at the school is OK. This hurts. It hurts bad."

Selena Avila said as word spread quickly about what had happened, no one could really believe it.

“Logan is the nicest kid. Just so sweet. No one would ever want to hurt him," she said. "And I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about (the shooter). Everyone is shocked at what he did.

“We’re a tight-knit, Christian community. We thought we were safe here.”

Then she looked down at her hands folded in her lap as she said one of her friends had summed it up perfectly earlier. “She said that West Liberty is like a snow globe, all beautiful and quiet, and today our glass shattered.”

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah