A morning of terror: Marshall County victims recount chaos and heroism in school shooting

This account is based on interviews conducted in Benton and from Louisville by Courier Journal reporters, reports by the Kentucky State Police and Marshall County Sheriff's Office, social media posts, and accounts by other news organizations, including the USA TODAY NETWORK, ABC, CBS, the Lexington Herald-Leader, NBC, WKRN-TV Nashville and WKMS radio at Murray State University.

BENTON — As she did every day before leaving for work, Secret Holt hugged and kissed her 15-year-old daughter Bailey – a "perfect sweet soul" – goodbye before heading to work on an unremarkable Tuesday morning in January.

A few miles away, Kennadi Spraggs woke up late, “as always.” She ran a brush through her hair, crammed her stuff into a backpack and drove to school blaring "weird indie music with the windows down."

Flashing a smile, a teacher held open a door for Kennadi at the sprawling Marshall County High School, 200 miles southwest of Louisville. It was Jan. 23. She walked into the school – the heart of the tight-knit rural community – and a place that would never be the same again.

For now, though, students went about their business. Some gathered in the library. Others straggled in late. Hundreds crowded into the commons, a large room adorned with school banners, painted in the school colors of orange and white, and supported by pillars emblazoned with words like “Respect,” “Humility,” “Patience" and "Fairness.”

A friend walked up and gave Kennadi a "high five,” as he did most mornings, patted her on the back and showed off his latest dance moves.

Then an explosive sound pierced the commons.

Background: Confusion, then chaos, at Marshall County HS as shots rang out

Sophomore Ariyanne Posey thought it was a balloon popping. Maybe it was someone's birthday, she told herself. Senior Joseph Morton thought it was somebody stomping their feet. Sophomore Ashley Collie, near the "Ag Shop," thought somebody was hammering metal.

Other students recognized gunfire, but did a double take because they never expected to hear it in a school.

“I just remember thinking every shot was somebody’s life,” Gracie Ray, a sophomore, who was talking to a friend in the commons, later told the Herald-Leader.

It was 7:57 a.m. – eleven minutes before first bell.

Sophomore Kaden Chiles looked up and saw a boy holding a gun with both hands, fire coming from the muzzle, he told Courier Journal.

Bryan Ligon, 14, was so close he could smell burnt gunpowder.

Lexie Waymon, 16, who’d been talking with a friend about makeup and Marshall County's next basketball game, told CBS News she was so close she heard a body hit the ground.

“There (were) bullets flying everywhere,” Baleigh Culp, a junior, said.

The gunman said nothing as he fired. He aimed at the sophomores who clustered in the same part of the commons each morning, Kaden said.

The shooter's eyes were lifeless, junior Bryson Conkwright told ABC News.

“He didn’t pause, he didn’t hesitate,'' Bryson said. "He just pulled” the gun out and “he just did it. He didn’t care. He didn’t even flinch.”

Alexandria Caporali, 16, said the shooter was determined. “He knew what he was doing. It was just one right after another: bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.”

Sophomore Sydney Temple, just feet from the shooter, said she saw a boy with blood pouring from his side.

“It was horrifying,” she told the Herald-Leader.

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Bryson, who hid between two vending machines, said, “I was just sitting there in shock and watching my friends and people that I've known forever” as they “just dropped. It was unbelievable."

A bullet grazed his hand.

He watched Bailey Holt die.

FEARING THE WORST

Two minutes after the first shot, the first 911 call went out.

It was 7:59 a.m.

Terry Stearns was sipping coffee in the emergency room at Marshall County Hospital when he heard school resource officer Ray Chumbler on the police radio, reporting a shooter at the high school. Chumbler sounded out of breath.

"I knew it wasn't going to be a good day because he don't play games,” thought Stearns, who runs the ER. His concerns weren't just professional: His 17-year-old son was at the school.

Within five minutes of the first shot, more than 100 first-responders were on the scene. A Kentucky State trooper saw Bailey's body and mistook her for his own daughter, who he’d dropped off at the school earlier.

As police and sheriff’s deputies raced in, some students tried to take cover.

Joseph Morton saved the Word document he was working on and hid in the library. Ashley Collie took refuge in a teacher’s office.

Background: Kentucky State Police had held active-shooter training at MCHS

But most of the school's 1,300 students fled.

“Everyone was just screaming and crying and saying 'Get down!’’ Kennadi Spraggs told ABC. “I thought that if you get down, there’s a chance that you’ll never get back up.”

Her parents had told her that if anything bad happened at school to go to the body shop across the street.

"I began to run faster than I could have ever thought possible,” she later wrote in a Facebook post. “I ran without looking back. I ran past so many classmates frozen with fear. I ran for my life. I ran until I was weak, sobbing hysterically as a stranger flung open their car door and allowed me to seek refuge inside. I didn't know them and they did not know me but I was clinging to them with all I had."

Boys and girls held hands as they raced from the school. Some students slipped on spilled soft drinks and coffee. Others lost their shoes. Kaden said he slipped several times; another student said he fell and someone stepped on his back.

“Everyone was screaming, scrambling to get out,” said Bryson Conkwright, who kicked open a jammed door to get away.

There were acts of kindness and heroism amid chaos.

Gracie Ray told the Herald-Leader she saw a boy shield a friend who’d been shot, though he was also wounded.

Teachers pulled the injured from the school, not knowing who or where the shooter was.

Junior Tanner Fuller dragged special needs student Daniel Austin, 17 and a sophomore, from the building after he collapsed, a bullet wound in his shoulder. Junior Tristan Cline told CBS he found Daniel 50 yards from the school.

“He was scared’’ and at first no one knew what to do, Tristan said. Assistant Principal Brent Lovett and teacher Dan Langhi helped load Daniel into his car for a race to the hospital.

“I drove as fast as I could,” Tristan said.

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As they ran, students dropped their bags and their phones. They jumped fences and ran into the woods, or down the middle of the road. Some tried to drive off-road to get away, getting stuck instead.

Other students sheltered at a nearby dentist’s office or a mile away at a McDonald’s. As many as 100 crowded into Mitchell Garland’s used-car business, Garland Motorsports. Some were screaming and crying, he said. His own son, 16, sped away in a car with a friend.

FRANTIC CALLS

Parents began to flood the school grounds, desperately trying to find their kids.

Electrician Brian Cope had just gotten to his shop when he heard there was a shooter in the school, where his son, Preston, was a sophomore.

"I called my wife right then and she said ‘I can’t get a hold of him, I can’t get a hold of him,’" Cope said. "I said ‘oh dear Lord,’ and I just fell to the ground."

Over and over, Cope desperately called Preston's cell phone. Finally, someone answered.

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"Oh buddy, buddy, are you OK? Are you alright? Are you OK? Are you alright?’" Cope asked. But Marshall County schools Superintendent Trent Lovett, a family friend, was on the phone.

"Brian," Lovett told Cope, "He’s not OK. He’s not OK. And you need to get here."

Gloria Hollifield, whose grandson was at the school, was driving when a radio station broke in with a bulletin. She stopped to call her daughter, Heather Adams.

“It was the hardest call I ever made,” Hollifield told WKMS. “All I knew was that there was a shooting and that it had to be bad. There were emergency vehicles from so many counties.

“I’m 60-some years old and I've never been so damn scared in my entire life,” said Hollifield, a reporter and photographer at the Lake News in nearby Calvert City. "And I work in the news. But at some point it’s not the news. It’s you.”

Her grandson was safe, but her daughter arrived to find a distraught woman who couldn’t find her child.

The woman learned her own son had been identified as the shooter.

“I held her hair while she threw up,” Heather Adams later told the radio station. “She was going into shock. She needed an ambulance and I couldn't get an ambulance there. We got a firefighter's coat to put on her.”

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The woman told Adams the boy had taken the gun from her closet, but he had called to tell her there had been a shooting.

And he told her he was scared.

RANDOM VIOLENCE

The shooter ran out of ammunition and tried to get away, but didn't get far. He didn't resist when Marshall County Sheriff Keith Byars took him into custody. Photos show the boy, dressed in a black T-shirt, a sweatshirt and blue jeans, being escorted from the school by three officers.

Marshall County Attorney Jeffrey Edwards, who raced to the scene, said it looked like the shootings were random.

"To walk in, the backpacks laying around, the phones laying around, going off … it’s indescribable," he said.

Twelve students with gunshot wounds were rushed six miles to Marshall County Hospital, which has just eight emergency room beds. Of the eight who were admitted, none were crying or screaming, said Stearns, the ER chief. All were in shock.

For the doctors and nurses, the medical crisis was personal. In a town of 4,531, it was inevitable they would know some of the kids. But their training kicked in. They had a school shooting drill just two years ago.

All other surgeries were canceled, and they got lucky: There were no other emergency patients all day.

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Nurse Julie Lane said she was as shocked as any of the patients. She graduated from Marshall County High School, as did her husband and both their kids.

“I just felt so sorry,” she said. “They’re just children.”

ASKING WHY

Authorities have not named the alleged shooter, who is charged with murder and assault, because he's only 15. But everyone knows sophomore Gabriel “Gabe” Parker was led away in handcuffs.

It was 8:10 a.m. – 13 minutes after shots rang out.

Gabe's parents divorced in 2007 and have each since remarried. His father, Austin Parker, recently divorced again, from a woman who accused him of slapping her during an argument. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

Gabe's mother, Mary Garrison Minyard, who edits an online community newspaper, had rushed to cover the shooting only to learn her own son was in custody.

The shooter's motive remains a mystery.

Ashley Collie, 15, who knows Gabe from math class, said he seemed to be “a really good kid.”

Kaden Chiles, who was in an Advanced Placement European History and gym with Gabe, described him as "nerdy smart."

"He was a band kid" who played trombone, Kaden said, adding that Gabe was overweight and not athletic, but no students were mean to him.

"We were friends," Kaden said.

Classmates say Gabe was quiet and mostly kept to himself. A neighbor said the boy's grandmother was his best friend.

But Ashley said there's talk that when Gabe returned to school after Christmas break he was “snappy,” talked about violence and about joining the Mafia.

On his Instagram account, Gabe wrote, “I trust no one not even myself," a quote he attributed to Joseph Stalin.

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He also identified as a member of the Las Vegas-based “United Church of Bacon,” which describes itself as “a real church with a funny name” for skeptics and atheists, and that its 10 commandments include “Have Fun” and “Respect Boundaries.”

SAYING GOODBYE

Secret Holt tried repeatedly to reach her daughter, Bailey, on her cell phone. But when they connected, the dying girl was unable to speak.

"All I could hear was voices, chaos in the background,” Holt told NBC News. “She couldn’t say anything and I tried to call her name over and over and over and she never responded.”

Her mother said she was fun-loving, creative, bold. She’d worn Converse sneakers with her homecoming dress.

Her mother called her “a perfect sweet soul.”

Brian Cope looked into an ambulance and knew right away the boy inside was his son. He could tell by his socks. He had laid them out for 15-year-old Preston the night before.

Preston, who had been shot in the head and the hands, was loaded into a medical helicopter, eyes closed. Brian and Preston's mother, Teresa, told them they loved him.

"And he lifted his leg," Teresa said, seeming to acknowledge what they had said.

Preston died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, 100 miles southeast of Marshall County. His parents reached the school just in time to say goodbye.

“I'm firm in my faith that God guided us safely through all of that to get us there so we could speak to our baby and just let him know we loved him," Brian Cope said.

Twenty-three students were injured; 16 were shot. All were between the ages of 14 and 18.

In an automated voice message to parents, Superintendent Lovett called it "a tragedy beyond words."

“I know that as parents, our greatest fear is something happening to our children, and today that fear became a reality,” he said. “I ask you all as a community to wrap your arms around these families and around these students … Hold your children close tonight … God be with us all."

Reporter Darcy Costello contributed to this story. Justin Sayers: 502-582-4252; jsayers@gannett.com; Twitter: @_JustinSayers. Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/justins; www.courier-journal.com/andreww.