Word: cafeteria
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...Free Cookie Day in the cafeteria, and there were hundreds of students draped around the tables and waiting in lines at the 11:30 lunch hour when the sounds of the firing erupted outside. Students saw two boys in trench coats and masks firing at kids; one tossed something up onto the roof of the school, and it exploded in a flash. Some kids thought it was the long-awaited senior prank; they had been expecting balloons filled with shaving cream. Surely those are firecrackers, they thought. Surely those guns are fake. Is the blood fake? Can a fake bomb...
...Cafeteria worker Karen Nielsen had rushed to help the bleeding students when she spotted the shooters. As she heard the shots blowing through the room, she shoved the kids into a bathroom. She pulled a phone along with her to call the police. But then she worried, "They'll see the cord. And then we'll be trapped...
Sheriff's deputy Neil Gardner, posted at the school for security, heard the shots and ran toward the cafeteria. When he spotted one gunman, he exchanged fire, then ducked for cover and called for backup. By this time the 911 calls were already coming in, and the SWAT cars were on the scene within 20 minutes. But the bombs were still going off, and the officers had no idea how many shooters there were--or which ones were killers and which were targets. "They didn't want to go in there with guns blazing," says Cathy Scott, mother...
Other teachers had the same instincts. Business teacher Dave Sanders was in the faculty lounge when he heard the trouble, raced toward the cafeteria and went to war. "He screamed for us to get down and shut up," says freshman Kathy Carlston. "We crawled on the floor and made it to the stairs." When the firing began again, they got up and started to run. Sanders, on the ground, propped himself on his elbows, directing kids to safety as the killers moved in. Too terrified to look back, Kathy never saw the shooters, but she could tell they were close...
...class was rescued. Students asked if they could please help carry Sanders out on a table. No, said the SWAT team, and they herded the students through the halls, now filled with 6 in. of water from the sprinklers, past the bodies and the blood sprayed everywhere. In the cafeteria the half-eaten lunches lay soaking on the tables. "Everything was left in place," says Lexis, "like it was a normal day." She recalls the police yelling, "If any of you take your hands away from your head, we're going to pull you away immediately...