(KGTV) - The sound of gunfire was met with fear and disbelief by students at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita Thursday.
Two students died and three others were injured on campus, officials said. In the hours following the shooting on campus, the teenage survivors shared their emotional stories.
“It was very scary; we ran, we heard the one shot and four after and we just started running,” said a female student. “All I heard was all these kids running and just screaming and calling their parents; it was very sad.”
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“It was like a balloon pop, super loud, and everyone started running and it was really scary,” said a boy who had been outside the school when the shooting happened. His concern was for his sister, who had arrived on campus early for choir rehearsal. She texted him that she was safe, but the shooting had happened close to her.
"I'm just not gonna forget it," said a girl as her mother clutched her outside the school.
Other students shared the experience of running away from campus.
“So we were waiting outside of the locker room cause it wasn’t open yet, and all of a sudden we just we were with all of our friends and we heard the gunshots and we were, ‘Let’s go, let’s run.' We ran through the field, we went through the gate cause it was open and we had to go underneath the pipeline so we literally crawled underneath the pipeline. And there were construction workers and they like, helped us get through the hill and into the neighborhood, and we just kept walking until we got to the park.”
Some of the children sought refuge in the first moments of the crisis with a man who lives near the school.
“Coming out of my house to go get my coffee and I saw all kind of kids running up the street, screaming, crying, yelling. And it really saddened my heart, you know. And they were saying, ‘can we go in your house’ and there must have been 20 of them in my house. I wanted to make sure they were safe so we got them in there.”
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Throughout the emergency, the young survivors helped each other.
“I never looked back. We just all kept running, and we were all helping each other, like ‘oh, do you have a ride, do you have a ride’ because it was just like a big group of us running through this neighborhood, trying to get away. Everybody helped each other; I was actually really surprised because I thought people would just panic and push people out of the way but everybody was helping each other. Everybody worked as a community to help each other like these kids,” said a female student.
The survivors who sheltered in place at the school were evacuated on buses and reunited with their parents.
