KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Olathe East High School parents and students are expressing relief after being reunited following a shooting at the school that left three injured.
The shooting happened Friday morning and injured a student, administrator and school student resource officer. The student is the suspect in the initial incident.
In response, the school went on lockdown for several hours, and parents have only recently been reunited with their children.
One parent expressed relief after seeing her child.
"I'm excited. I wanted to cry," the parent said, while getting choked up. "Oh my baby is here."
Though parents had been informed that no students were injured, many felt they couldn't relax until they laid eyes on them.
"When she got off the bus I checked her whole body. I'm not letting them go anywhere. They're not going out of my sight," the parent said. "I'm so happy I started crying."
Though that parent also expressed anxiety for her other child who was still in the building.
"I got one more child in there, I gotta get her out," she said. "Once I get her out I can breathe."
Another student heard the gunshots while in class.
"I found out what happened when the gushots went off," she said. "I was in the room right next to where it happened."
She said she remembers hearing several gunshots, and immediately got under a table.
"I wanted to talk to everybody that I love so that's what I did while I was underneath the table," she said.
But after that initial fear, the students were still under lockdown for several more hours.
"I think everybody was petrified," she said. "Everybody was calling their moms. Everybody was saying I love you. It was very scary."
She wasn't the only one who felt that way. One student said he felt scared after realizing the seriousness of the situation, though he did not hear the gunshots.
"I panicked," the student said after being reunited with his father. "I got scared for my friends because we were in different classrooms."
His dad said that he hopes the incident results in change.
"For me it's more just of a shock," his dad said. "I think that the legislators, congressmen, mayor, everybody needs to get together and do what they need to do to secure our children better."
His son was able to keep him updated on the situation. He called him and stayed in contact until his phone died. The father was thankful he had someway to talk to his child during the whole event.
"Everybody get your kids a cellphone because they're going to need it," he said.
He planned to take his son home and try to decompress from the stressful day.
"I'm about to take him home to his mom so she can be relieved," the dad said. "We're going to pray that this never happens again."
