Family members of students and staff at Apalachee High School called 911 in a panic as a mass shooting that left four dead unfolded on Sept. 4, according to news reports.
The reports come amid ongoing services for some of the victims planned for Saturday.
A memorial service for Mason Schermerhorn, a ninth grader who “loved Disney World and LEGOs,” was scheduled for Saturday afternoon at a civic center and attendees were asked to wear his favorite color, red. Cristina Irimie, a math teacher and pillar of her tight-knit Romanian Orthodox community, is set to be remembered at a separate service in the afternoon.
The released calls did not include any made by or including children from within the school, according to the media reports.
The 911 call center was overwhelmed with calls at about 10:20 a.m., when authorities say 14-year-old Colt Gray began his rampage, according to WAGA-TV, which reviewed the audio. Some were met with an automated message that there was “high call volume.”
“Sir, my daughter goes to school next door to Apalachee. Is there a school shooter?” one caller said, according to WAGA-TV.
“We do have an active situation (at) Apalachee High School right now. We have a lot of calls coming in,” a 911 operator responded.
Some of the audio included calls made by officers.
“A parent is on the phone with their child,” an officer said in one recording, according to CNN. “They are in the art room, locked up.”
A man told a 911 operator that his daughter worked as a school psychologist at Apalachee and was working with a student in a trailer “next to where the shooting was happening,” CNN reported. The man said his daughter tried to hide behind a desk with the student.
“I want them to be aware that she’s in a trailer and she can’t, you know, lock the doors and if they can check on the trailers,” he said.
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Over an hour after the shooting started, one call made to Barrow County 911 came from a woman who identified herself as Gray’s aunt, CNN reported.
“My mom just called me and said that Colt texted his mom, my sister and his dad that he was sorry, and they called the school and told the counselor to go get him immediately,” the woman said, according to CNN. “And then she said she saw that there’s been a shooting, and I’m just worried it was him.”
According to a report from the Washington Post, the teen’s mother texted her sister she called the school half an hour before the shooting began and said there was an “extreme emergency” with her son.
Gray is being charged with murder for the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Ricky Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Eight other students and one teacher were injured. Gray’s father, Colin Gray, also faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and cruelty to children.
