“After all I get more I’m angry because… I didn’t have anything” for protection, such as a bulletproof vest, Reyes said ABC’s Amy Robach. in segment broadcast Tuesday on “Good morning America.”
Officers responded within minutes of the shooter entered the classroom but was thrown back fire and then posted in corridor to call for reinforcements and equipment such as body armor, even if children inside called 911 and begged for police help indicates the timeline.
The teacher told the students to “act like are you sleeping’
Reyes told horror stories of what happened in two classes.
Earlier in the day, the students attended the graduationof-year ceremony and some went home after. For others who stayed at school, Reyes was playing a movie he told ABC that also ventilated parts of his interview on monday on “World news tonight with David Muir.
The students then heard gunshots and asked him what was going on. on.
“And I said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening on, but let’s go ahead and crawl under the table. Get under the table and act like you’re sleeping,” Reyes recalled to ABC.
‘Till they did it, and I gathered them under the table and told them to act like they’re going to sleep, about the time I turned around and saw him standing there.”
Reyes couldn’t move after the shot, he said, and the shooter turned gun on students.
The officers were heard outside class and child in the other class pleaded for police helpReyes said. But Reyes believes that by then the officers had already retreated. down corridor, he told ABC.
“One of students from next in the classroom were saying, “Officer, we in here. Were in here,” he said. – But they already left.”
“I said to myself, ‘I told my kids to act like they sleep so I will act like i sleep also”, he recalled.
When the Border Patrol unit eventually went inside, “it was just bullets are everywhere,” he told ABC.
“And then I just remember how the border patrol used to say, “Get up get up.’ And I couldn’t get up” Reyes said.
‘I’m sorry. i tried mine best’
Reyes had a message for students’ parents.
“Sorry. I tried best from what I was told to do. Please do not be angry with me,” he told ABC through tears.
No amount of training could prepare him or the students for carnage they faced, he said.
“Everything happened too fast. Training, lack of training, all kinds of training – nothing will prepare you for this,” he said.
“We taught our children to sit under the table, and I thought so … at the time, but we set them up to be like ducks. …
“You can give us all the training you want… the laws have to change, he said. won’t ever change unless they change the laws.”
“Nobody in this is world deserves this of pain. … Nobody deserves this, he told ABC. – I’ll go to the end. of in world do sure things get changed.”
Travis Caldwell of CNN contributed to this report.
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