One of the injured survivors of Thursday’s high school shooting in California has been identified as a teenage girl who was saved by a hero choir teacher after stumbling into her classroom with wounds as the gunman wreaked terror on their campus.
The teenager, named only as Addison, was one of five kids shot by gunman Nathaniel Berhow on Thursday, his 16th birthday, at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita.
Two children, who have not yet been named, died of their injuries. Berhow remains in a critical condition in the hospital after trying unsuccessfully to commit suicide.
Police say he showed no signs he was capable of such violence.
Addison is expected to make a full recovery. Details of her injuries are unknown but her aunt said she had undergone surgery and was recovering in the hospital.
The teenager, who has been named only as Addison, is recovering in the hospital. She was shot by gunman Nathaniel Berhow but managed to stumble into a classroom where a teacher was protecting other students and get help
Choir teacher Katie Holt was hiding 40 students behind a piano when Addison came into the room. She applied pressure to her wound and kept her alive until it was safe for the teenager to be taken to the hospital
She shared a photograph of the defiant teen smiling in her hospital bed with Good Morning America.
Addison stumbled into a room where choir teacher Katie Holt had huddled 40 children behind a piano after the shooting began.
Holt has since told how she cradled the youngster, comforting her as she bled, and applied pressure to her wound.
Once the shooting was over and Berhow had been apprehended, the teenager was taken to the hospital.
‘Addison rushed in. We cleared a space for her, I wrapped the wound.
Teenage shooter Nathaniel Berhow, 16, tried to kill himself after shooting five others but failed and he is now in the hospital in a critical condition. His motive remains unknown
‘She had a gunshot wound. I should have never had to treat a gunshot wound as a choir teacher. I held a bleeding child today in a room of 40 children,’ Holt said as she relived the horror on Friday morning.
She later told Today: ‘I don’t think there’s any sort of training that can prepare you for this.’
Berhow’s motive remains unknown and it is unclear how he got access to the .45 semi-automatic rifle he used to carry out the killings.
Neighbors say he had been struggling to cope with the death of his father and classmates have described him as ‘unsociable’.
His mother is understood to be being questioned by police.
The entire shooting took just 16 seconds, during which time he emptied his rifle’s entire magazine.
Other students have since told how they hid in place after turning off classroom lights and grabbed any items they thought they could use as weapons if confronted by the shooter.
Depressingly, many said they had practiced what to do either in drills with teachers or at home.
Police say this Instagram account belonged to the shooter and that he posted this threat – ‘have fun at school tomorrow’ before the killings. Instagram insists it is not a legitimate account and was made by someone else
Berhow is pictured above as a child with his parents Mark and Mami and his sister. Berhow’s father was believed to have been an avid hunter, according to social media and his obituary. He died in December 2017 of a heart attack, according to his obituary
One boy told ABC that his parents had instructed him on what to do if an active shooter entered his school.
‘Yeah they’ve told me, your first instinct is to grab something you can hit someone with and put a book in front of your chest.’
Others text their parents, telling them they loved them, fearful that they were going to die.
One said: ‘Hey mom, I don’t know what’s going on here at school but I love you and am so thankful for everything you’ve done for me. I love you so much.’
Another student text her father saying: ‘We just heard gunshots. If anything happens.
‘Please know that I love you.’
Sisters Micah and Samara Turner were in separate parts of the school when the shooting began.
Micah said she watched as Berhow picked people off, firing his gun indiscriminately.
‘At first I thought it was fake. I just saw him fire one, two, three, then saw just a body fall.
‘My first instinct was to get out of there and to find my sister,’ she told CBS This Morning.
She added that she would never forget the look on Berhow’s face.
‘Just seeing that one person fall… it’s going to be hard to forget, but I’m going to have to live with that sight in my head,’ she said.
Samara said the shooting left her with a ringing in her ears.
Medical personnel load an injured person into an ambulance outside Saugus High School in Santa Clarita
At least one person was said to have been shot in the abdomen
Many students were in tears or on their phone with their loved ones during the Saugus High School evacuation Thursday morning
Their father Jeff said he was ‘angry’ that they would not have to live the rest of their lives with the trauma of the shooting.
‘I know for a fact this will be with her the rest of her life and it makes me so angry,’ he said.
Some students who fled the school when the first shots rang out hid in a stranger’s house across the street.
Larry Everhart had just left his house to get coffee, he told CNN, when 20 youngsters came hurtling towards him, begging to take refuge in his house
‘They were saying, “Can I come in your house?”
‘It was about 20 of them. I wanted to make sure they were safe, so I got them in there,’ he said.
Sheriffs say that Berhow did not choose his victims and instead shot for whoever was ‘available’.
‘He wasn’t chasing anyone. [The victims] appeared to be who was around him, available at the time,’ Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said.