Story by Blake Sandlin, Assistant Sports Editor
Story by Ashley Traylor, News Editor
It was 7:57 a.m. on a regular Tuesday morning when Knox Sandlin heard a sound that would forever echo in the hearts, minds and halls of Marshall County High School. A sound that would shake and challenge a community to its very core. The sound of gunshots in his high school.
“Everyone thought the first shot was someone that popped a balloon,” Sandlin said. “But they kept coming and after the second I think everyone knew that there was a shooter.”
Sandlin, who was standing further away from where the initial shots were fired, said they weren’t as loud in his ears as some. But the words of his teacher rang clearly in his head.
“Go,” his teacher said. “There are gunshots. Go.”
As everyone began to scatter in the Commons Area of Marshall County High School, Sandlin described the frantic scene unfolding before his eyes. Backpacks, phones and drinks were discarded to the ground. Shoes were lost in the scramble. Students slipped on spilled beverages. As students managed to exit the area, the shooter eventually followed them outside in an attempt to blend in with the others.
“Some people saw him shooting but no one was concerned about seeing who it was, just getting the hell out of there,” Sandlin said.
Sandlin said no one knew for sure who the shooter was for sure. Rumors spread that the shooter had blended in with the rest of the crowd, acting like one of the frenzied students running for their lives.
“No one expected him to be the guy,” Sandlin said. “He was a really nice kid. Smart, funny and seemed to be liked. When I was around him, there wasn’t really any indication that he was capable of something like that.”
But the scene that was unfolding before Sandlin’s eyes proved what he thought was impossible.
“People were climbing out of windows and trampling over people,” Sandlin said. “What I saw as soon as I got out was everyone in a panic. I heard teachers asking what was going on because they were in the dark as much as we were.”
Sandlin said students were jumping into cars, running across the street and onto a nearby bus.
Before making the decision to cross the street, Sandlin said a teacher calmly approached him, attempting to console the group he was with and told them where to go to get to safety.
“The group I was following literally broke down a fence and we were walking over it,” he said. “Obviously everyone was scattered because their instinct was to get as far away as they could as quick as they could.”
During lockdown, speculation took over for a lack of true information. Sandlin said students were crying, scared and reluctant to remain cooped up in one room for two hours without any information. But he said Marshall County High School’s principal, Patricia Greer, was determined to keep students calm and collected.
“She came around to keep people informed and she did a superb job on how she handled it all,” Sandlin said. “She told everyone to stay there and she rallied all the faculty at North to let them know how things were gonna go and did the same with the parents.”
For Sandlin and so many students like him, Jan. 23 will go down in history as the day of the Marshall County High School shooting. But it will also be known as the day that a community rallied together, linked arms and chose to remain Marshall strong.
The Murray State News chronicled the accounts of several Marshall County students in the wake of the shooting. Read their stories below.