After a teenager went on a deadly rampage at an Oregon elementary school last week, tales of heroism quickly surfaced. A father passing by who chased the attacker and killed him. A teacher who tried to tackle the gunman.
Another teacher was said to have thrown herself on top of a student during the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore. But she wants to clear the record: She said she was given too much credit for her role.
“The truth is I was shot before I had any chance to act,” the teacher, Becky Drury, said in a statement released by her family on Wednesday.
A family friend of a 7-year-old child who was injured in the attack said last week that Ms. Drury had shielded the child and saved her life when the assailant fired at both of them.
But Ms. Drury, who is still hospitalized with her wounds, said she that was not how she remembered the events.
She recalled hearing a commotion outside the special education classroom and running into the hall to find out what was going on.
“I then saw the shooter and immediately ran back into the classroom,” she said. “I turned to shut the door behind me, but the shooter was already there. Before I could do anything more, he shot me at close range and I fell to the ground.”
Ms. Drury’s left arm was nearly severed by the gunshot, and her right arm was also injured, her statement said.
“I could not get up, defend myself, or protect anyone else,” she wrote. “So, I did the only thing I could do, which was to pretend to be dead in the hope he would not shoot me again.”
The police have credited several people with preventing more deaths at Silver Rail. On Thursday, the assailant, identified as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, a former special education student at Silver Rail, jumped a fence outside the school, shot his way in through locked doors and killed three children and one teacher. Rhoam Summer, 5, was one of the slain students; the other students, who have not yet been identified, were 8 and 11. Megan Lambert, the teacher who died, was 25.
The police are still searching for a motive. Law enforcement officials have said the pump-action shotgun used in the attack had been purchased by the gunman’s mother.
The authorities have said the attacker was stopped by a father of two students at the school who saw the attack begin as he drove by on a lunch break. The father chased him into the school and shot him with a handgun. Officials have also hailed another teacher for trying to tackle the shooter and throwing her phone at him, saying that she helped slow the attack.
Ms. Drury, an inclusion education specialist who has worked at Silver Rail for eight years, spoke to the police about her experience this week, her family’s representative said.
Precise details about what occurred in the attack have been slow to emerge. The police initially said there were seven people in the classroom. This week, they updated that to say there were nine people in the room during the shooting: five children, one of whom escaped unharmed, and four adults, including two teachers who were not injured.
Students in most of the Bend-LaPine School District returned to class Wednesday morning. But Silver Rail remains closed.
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