Two Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, used kevlar sheets from a marksmanship course as a protective barrier to protect others during last week's school shooting.
Speaking to Tampa's Fox 13, two students identified as Zachary and Colton described how they and others responded to the active shooter, who killed 17 people, by taking steps to protect fellow students. Zachary said he recognized quickly that it was a shooting and directed the JROTC students who he leads to shelter.
"I heard the pops, I heard the fire drill, and I knew there was a shooter," he said. "I looked at all the kids behind me, just looking at me frozen, and I yelled to them 'Run back to the classroom, go back now!"
Colton described how they used kevlar and tables to set up a "wall" in the classroom.
"In our JROTC program, we have a team that's called marksmanship, so our backdrop for the targets that we shoot are actually kevlar sheets that we hang," he said. "We put everybody behind them. That way they were all at least somewhat safe because the kevlar—it wouldn't have stopped a bullet, but it would have slowed it down a lot so that the damage someone would have received from it, God forbid, would have been a lot less."
They also described how Nikolas Cruz, the alleged shooter who has been charged with 17 counts of murder, had acted strangely at school. Zachary said Cruz took his water bottle once just to spit the water out, and Colton had seen him in JROTC but said he never spoke.
The students also described how it was not surprising that assistant football coach Aaron Feis was willing to put his life on the line to protect students.
"Coach Feis was very selfless," Colton said. "He put himself after other people; he graduated from Douglas in 1999, and ever since then he became a security guard and a football coach, and he's been here since he graduated."
Feis died after being shot while protecting other students.
"That's what made Coach Feis so awesome is that he put himself after somebody else," Colton added.