Bethany Highman desperately wanted her daughter to know that she was nearby, even if she couldn’t see her.
Highman’s daughter was inside Abundant Life Christian School when a student shot and killed another student and a teacher and injured six other people. Two of the injured have life-threatening injuries.
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Highman was able to Facetime her daughter and assure the girl that she was close to the school, waiting for her. And it was a comfort to find out that her daughter was with Highman’s sister, a teaching assistant at the school.
“They’re not really telling us too much. But my daughter is OK,” Highman said. “I was just briefly able to see my daughter through something very traumatic and let her know that I was close to the church. She’s safe. I really don’t know any details.”
Highman’s husband, Reynaldo LeBaron, was in Sauk City when he heard about the shooting at his daughter’s school. He has no idea how he will explain the shooting to his daughter, whom he was waiting to be reunited with at Dean Clinic.
“It definitely breaks your heart. I’m real sad, but I’m glad she’s OK,” LeBaron said. “There’s wicked people in this world and we got a taste of it today.”
People leave after waiting at City Church following a school shooting Monday at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison's Far East Side.
More than three hours after the shooting, Rob Nelson was still waiting to be unified with his two children but had spoken with his 14-year-old daughter, Olive, a freshman, who had texted him about the shooting.
He said students from the school were taken across the parking lot to the church.
“She had messaged me that her school was on lockdown and that she had heard gunshots ... she heard pops and bangs that sounded like a gun, and Olive is very familiar, we are a hunting family,” Nelson said. “But she said she was safe but was not sure about my son.”
Nelson eventually heard from his 12-year-old son, Charles, a few hours later because his seventh-grade son’s phone had been in his locker.
“He said he was also OK and I can tell you that that was the roughest two hours of my life,” Nelson said. “The kids will not be going back to school here.”
Parents were sent Dean Clinic until they could be reunified with their children. They were required to go through metal detectors and sign in, and each was issued a white name tag with their name handwritten in black marker. Parents “were packed into a small room,” according to Nelson, with “basically no information.”
Nelson had left the clinic to take a break and had walked to a Kwik Trip across the street from the clinic.
“Their mother attended school here and I also was looking for them to potentially get a little bit better education and safer education, let’s face it. But after this incident I think about it and the reality of it is there is no additional security at this school compared to any others.”
Louis Bentley, whose sister has two girls, ages 6 and 13, at the school, lives a few blocks from the scene and had heard about the shooting from a customer who had called his office in Monona. He had heard the sirens prior to the phone call.
Bentley said his sister was on her way from Sun Prairie. He looked over the mass of emergency vehicles that filled Buckeye Road near the school.
“This is scary,” Bentley said as he held a small dog.
“It’s never a good time for this ever, but it’s the holidays and our family is very close. I just pray to God that this is going to,” Bentley said, as his voice trailed off to sobs.
Rachel Marquez has four nieces and nephews ages 2 to 13 at the school. She was notified by her sister that there had been a shooting and immediately made her way toward the school.
“Unreal. I don’t have any words,” Marquez said. “I think you’re always surprised. You always think it can’t happen to you.”
Kyla, a high school teacher at another school, lives in the area and has “very close family friends” who attend the school, kids she’s known since they were born. She asked that only her first name be used.
Standing on the sidewalk outside City Church wrapped in a blanket, eyes red from crying, she remembered that the kids were at her house just a couple days ago building gingerbread houses like they do every year.
“I know it’s cliche now at this point to say, but you never think that this is going to happen right in your backyard, right in front of you,” she said. “There are no words in the English language to describe how anybody, teachers, caregivers, family members, friends feel right now.”
Ed Downs’ grandson is a seventh-grade student at the school. The boy was able to text his family to let them know he’s safe.
Downs and his son David, the boy’s uncle, were watching the news, but decided to walk down the block and be there in person. They stood outside City Church on Monday afternoon, hoping to get a glimpse of the boy as he came out of school.
“I’m looking forward to hugging my grandson,” Downs said.
“You always think that it’s somewhere else, it’s not going to happen in your immediate area, and now we’ve been proven wrong. It can happen anywhere.”
