Students grabbed scissors for defense and escaped out a window in deadly Michigan shooting. The suspect has been charged with murder
The terror at Michigan's Oxford High School that left four dead started with gunfire, yelling and an urgent message on a loudspeaker.
Then frightened students barricaded doors, phoned for help and picked up anything they could grab in case they needed to fight back.
Aiden Page, a senior, was in a classroom when he heard two gunshots Tuesday afternoon -- part of what authorities called a sophomore's "absolutely cold-hearted, murderous" rampage that left four students dead and seven other people injured in the deadliest shooting at a US K-12 school since 2018.
Just like in the active shooter drills they'd practiced, Page watched his teacher run in and lock the door, then students shoved desks against it, he told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"We grabbed calculators, we grabbed scissors just in case the shooter got in and we had to attack them," he said, describing how a bullet pierced one of the desks they'd used to block the door.
In a sign language class, freshman Mark Kluska heard someone announce a lockdodwn over the school's loudspeakers. His teacher shut the door and fixed it with a metal doorstop.
"I started realizing it was real when I began to hear yelling," Kluska told CNN.
Later, someone outside the room who claimed to be with the sheriff's office told Kluska and his classmates that all was safe and they could come out, a video the freshman recorded shows.
"We're not willing to take that risk right now," the teacher replies.
It's not clear who the person at the door was. But the teacher quickly signaled students to scramble out a first-floor window into the snow, Kluska said. From there, they raced across a courtyard to another part of the building, where a law enforcement officer herded them to safety.
