November 15

The day I learned fear doesn’t leave—it learns to live inside you.

Twenty-three years ago today, a former student walked into our high school with a shotgun and a can of gasoline. This is what it did to us—and what it still does to me.

November 15, 2025

It’s been twenty-three years today, and I can still feel that morning in my bones.

The first period bell just rang at Scurry-Rosser High School. Students settled into their desks. I had just locked the camera cabinet from the Zero Hour photography class—a decision I later came to regret.

Before I could close my door, the young secretary’s shaky voice came on the intercom and said, “Teachers and students, please make your way to the cafeteria.”

Then, the oddest thing happened.

She added, “And teachers—lock your doors behind you.”

I didn’t know it then, but a former student had walked up behind her, pressed the muzzle of a shotgun to the back of her head, and told her exactly what to say. That final line—the part about locking our doors—was her only warning to us that something was terribly wrong.

It worked.

My whole body went on alert. No one had ever given that instruction before, and it didn’t even make sense because the doors locked automatically.

My students were already rushing out of the room after the announcement. I asked the teacher across from me if he knew what was going on. He shook his head and told his kids to go. So, I did, too.

As I rounded the corner toward the cafeteria, I saw the assistant principal. His face was pale. He was gesturing with his arms, but I couldn’t tell if he was trying to get us all in the cafeteria faster or giving a warning.

I looked behind him and saw the long gun first, attached to a boy-faced man on the other end. He walked with purpose and was slinging a liquid, which I later learned was gasoline, on students. He poured it over a girl with cerebral palsy in an electric wheelchair. He then dropped the can, pulled out a lighter, and tried to set her afire.

The students were still rushing into the cafeteria. A girl pushed past me, saying she wanted to be in the front to see the action. The students thought it was another drill, another staged tragedy for their benefit.

As I took in the scene, one thought came to mind—run.

I turned to the thirty or so kids behind me, all still laughing and pushing, and screamed RUN.

A student stopped to argue with me. I didn’t have time for that.

The other kids could tell by my expression and voice that I was serious. They bolted down the science hallway.

I ran into a science teacher, who was unaware of what was happening. I yelled for her to run, too. I was behind them, yelling for all of them to get out of the building and line up against the brick school.

Just as I was vacating, I saw my 16-year-old daughter. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her with me.

But where was my son?

As we lined up next to the wall, the science teacher and I could see people moving at the front of the school. Maybe they were just students coming in late, or parents here for a meeting. But my mind—and hers—automatically went to Jonesboro, Arkansas, where two middle school students pulled a fire alarm to lure students outside–and then began systematically shooting them. A year later, two boys from Columbine High School massacred their classmates.

So it was fresh. Those two shootings had changed everything. We were suddenly living in the era where school violence wasn’t unthinkable anymore—it was on the news every night.

I knew we had to get somewhere safe. I saw the athletic field house across the way, but we would have to pass the cafeteria to get to it. I didn’t even know if the field house was open. I told the kids to drop everything they were carrying and to run to it.

As I ran, I glanced toward the cafeteria. The doors were open. I saw him with the gun. I could hear shouting and commotion. I knew we had to get to safety.

But I didn’t know where my son was.

The field house doors were unlocked. My pint-sized daughter realized that if we could get in, anyone could. She yelled for someone to help her shove the Coke machine to block the doorway. Some boys went to the second doorway and barricaded it with a desk.

It was 2002, and I did not have a cell phone. I tried to dial 911 from the office desk, but the lines were busy. I was able to call my husband, who was on his way home from the fire station. I’m sure he felt helpless.

We turned off the lights and huddled in the corner like we were taught in active shooter drills. We jumped at every sound. I was shushing the kids, but it’s hard to hush crying children.

I don’t know how long it was before we heard a loud bang on the door and someone yelling, “Police.” But we had been in there for some time. We moved the Coke machine, and the police made us raise our hands in the air—checking to make sure we weren’t armed—before moving us to the football field.

But where was my son?

My mind kept rehearsing the worst—practicing grief I wasn’t built to carry. It still does, sometimes, with no warning at all. I still wake up at night reaching for him.

I later heard the story of what happened in the cafeteria. The young man with the shotgun, a former student, had been expelled from school months prior after stealing a teacher’s car and trying to sell it in Dallas. He was angry and came that day to kill the principal, we would learn during his subsequent trial.

But that didn’t explain why he had tried to light several kids on fire and meant to inflict as much pain and terror on people as possible.

The principal rushed to save the girl in the wheelchair, slipping on gasoline. The attacker then pressed the muzzle to his chest.

I don’t know if it was bravery or fear, but the principal grabbed the barrel and pushed it upward. Five nearby football players took that opportunity to rush him. Those five boys took down their 18-year-old former classmate and saved people in the school that day. A coach pried the gun from his hands.

The boys held him down with the heels of their cowboy boots, digging in and stomping where they could. Coaches had to pull them off of him.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest, but most gentle of the football players, scooped the girl from her wheelchair to carry her out of the building. It had rained the night before, so he used his shirt and a pool of rainwater to wash the gasoline from her.

That morning, the attacker called in bomb threats to area schools, so a bomb squad from Barksdale Air Force Base was sent to sweep the area.

We sat in the bleachers for hours, news helicopters buzzing overhead, waiting for the military to tell us our school was safe enough for us to enter and retrieve our purses, keys, and backpacks.

Reporters were crawling all over the place, scrambling for their live shots. And as the journalism teacher, I couldn’t help thinking about those cameras I had locked up before Zero Hour—closed away when they should’ve been rolling.

And my son? I was reunited with him in the football stands hours after the initial incident. I don’t think I ever hugged him harder or longer than I did that day.

We were lucky—or extremely blessed—that no one other than the attacker was seriously injured that day.

Over my 25-year teaching career, I’ve taught at three different schools where armed students or former students came onto campus.

Once, in my very class. I noticed a boy clinging to his backpack. I asked him to put it on the ground next to his desk, and he refused. He hugged it like a child would a Teddy Bear.

Again, my senses were on high alert.

That school had a silent alert system and the city police department on campus. I pushed that button, and within seconds the police had burst into the room like Ninjas. I nodded toward the boy, and they swept him away.

He did, in fact, have a loaded pistol in his backpack.

Even now, writing this, my chest tightens the same way it did in that field house. I still feel stupid for shaking, stupid for jumping when a door slams too hard down the hall.

But that’s the lie trauma tells—you weren’t hurt, so you shouldn’t hurt.

Except I was. My children were. Everyone in that building that day was hurt emotionally.

My daughter works from home, where she feels safer. My son keeps his own daughter in private school, hoping tuition can buy the safety that public schools can’t promise.

And me?

I still pull into the parking lot every morning and take one long breath before opening the door. I watch crowds the way some people watch the weather—scanning the sky for a sudden shift.

I find it difficult to be in a gym with students without fear pressing my chest. I cannot walk the halls during the passing period if there are a lot of people there.

I have to take medication just to go to work.

I love my students, but I know exactly how quickly a day like November 15th can turn.

Other schools didn’t fare as well as mine. Too many shootings. Too many funerals. Too many teachers and students left living half-in and half-out of their bodies because someone brought a gun to school that day.

And the fear doesn’t end just because the headline fades.

In 2023, first-grade teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot by a six-year-old student in her classroom. She will carry a bullet near her heart for the rest of her life—but the physical wound is only part of what she’ll live with now. I can only imagine the anxiety, the nightmares, the sudden shocks of panic she’ll have to manage.

Trauma like that settles in and stays.

At our school, the shooter’s shotgun meant only a few of us were in the line of fire that morning—the principal, the secretary with the barrel pressed to her head, the kids he soaked in gasoline.

But trauma doesn’t stay in neat circles.

That young secretary died months later from an autoimmune disease her family believed was triggered by what happened. And some of the students never found their way back either—gone to drugs, to despair, to the kind of hurt that doesn’t show up in any official report.

People think survival means you’re fine.

It doesn’t.

It just means you’re still here to feel the aftershocks.

Author’s Note:
I’ve never written this down in full. It happened twenty-three years ago today, and I’m sharing it now because teachers keep getting told to “expect the unexpected” like that means “expect to get shot.” We shouldn’t have to carry that. But we do.

© 2025 Carol Countryman. All rights reserved.
This piece is part of Psalm of Lies and the ongoing series Tales from East Texas.
Please share the link, not the text. Reprints, excerpts, or readings by permission only: carolcountryman@gmail.com.