‘We can’t live in fear’: I arrived minutes after the Townville Elementary shooting

“Kids are so innocent right now and they’re so moldable, they’re so susceptible to so many different things. What if they all grow up thinking that school shootings are the norm or thinking they could be shot while in school?

“This is the generation that could change things and it terrifies me that they’re exposed to this growing up.

“If they grow up with a fear for their lives while they’re at school, violence is winning.”

Yesterday at 2pm, a 14-year-old opened fire at the Townville Elementary School playground in South Carolina, injuring two children and a teacher.

Two miles down the road, it was discovered the shooter killed his father before driving to the school to harm innocents.

We now know that the teacher and one student have been released from AnMed Health Medical Center, while Jacob Hall, a first grader, still remains in critical condition at Greenville Memorial Hospital.

Senior English major, Ellie Nixon pulled into Townville Elementary School at 2:30pm, 30 minutes after the shooting took place. She works there through a program called GoalPOST.

Around midnight last night, she recounted what she’d seen. It wasn’t easy for her to talk about, and at points she was at a loss for words.

“I drove up to Townville Elementary School a little after 2:30 p.m. and I saw a bunch of police cars near the cemetery right next to the school. I was confused, but figured that there was a funeral going on in the cemetery.

Noting that the area wasn’t secured yet, she recalled how “I was then able to turn directly into the school. I pulled in and thought I was in carpool line, because sometimes there’s a long line when I get there, but now I know they were all undercover police cars. It took me a while, well, a few minutes, but it felt like longer, to realize there was a situation.”

It was then that she saw reporters and news vans and knew that something big had happened here. She started to call the head of her program, Eric Law, but got a text from GoalPOST before she had the chance. It told her not to go to Townville Elementary today because there had been an incident.

“It said the school had been evacuated and that was when I started panicking,” she said. “This all happened at 2:48p.m. I remember.”

At that moment, she saw a familiar face, another teacher in her program, Chelsea, who teaches third grade. “There were police, spectators, and what looked like family members outside. I pulled over to Chelsea and asked if she knew what was happening. She said, ‘I have no idea, but I just got a text from someone in my education class saying that there was an active shooter at Townville.’

“As she said that, I looked down and I had a phone call from my friend Mallory, an education major student teaching somewhere else. She called me panicking because she’d heard there was a school shooting at Townville and wanted to make sure I was okay.

“I motioned over to a reporter and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, do you know what’s going on?’

“He said, ‘The only information we’ve been given is that there was a school shooting at 2p.m. and that the shooter is in custody, but at least two people have been shot. One was a student, who has been airlifted to Greenville Hospital.

“Chelsea asked, “Do you know what age the student is?” and the reporter responded, “The student was a first grader, that’s what they’re saying on the police radar.”

“As I heard that, I looked over and saw a police car escorting out a school bus full of kids. That was very scary. I didn’t know what to do other than leave.

“I was shaking a lot, but it was numb shaking almost. I don’t know how to explain it.

“I didn’t cry at first or anything, I felt like I was a zombie. I was flipping through radio stations to see if there was anything on the news. That’s when I heard that there had been a shooting and a death three miles down the road. That kind of hit me.

“A bunch of things went through my head when I heard that. Maybe it was a faculty member, maybe it was a parent of one of the students, and maybe it was a targeted event. I didn’t know the age of the shooter, I didn’t know anything about the shooter until much later so I thought maybe it was a crazed person who was targeting a certain family or person. I had no idea what to think. I was just thinking of every type of possibility in my head.

Her next instinct was to call her mom. “When I called her, I started crying. I started explaining it to her and said ‘there’s been a school shooting.’ That’s when I realized how real it was. I wasn’t directly involved in it, but 30 minutes before I could’ve been, and just the idea that I know those students and I work with them every week felt surreal.”

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She sat in front of the TV for hours, watching every press conference, scouring news articles for new information about the victims’ statuses, and learning more details about what happened. “It’s horrifying. Especially knowing that I’m going to be a teacher and knowing that I’m in danger being a teacher just as the students are.”

“I saw Eric Law and Ms. Black, the heads of GoalPOST on TV. I saw a picture when I was looking through an article of one of my students being picked up by her dad from the church where they took all the kids. I saw a picture of the same school bus I’d seen when I was driving away. That, I think, is what’s been the most surreal thing. The shooting took place where I take my students for gym every Monday and Wednesday. The teacher that could’ve been shot could’ve been Eric Law, who I’ve worked directly with for the past two years.

“Thinking about what it could’ve been doesn’t help, it makes it more real. Looking at the footage of my school and seeing a reporter in a blue dress I’d been looking at in person that very day, just made everything so…” her voice faded, “I was right in the thick of it.”

“And it’s not about me, it’s just the idea that this could happen to anyone.”

As she was speaking to me, I also knew she was speaking to herself. “This schools in the middle of nowhere, if there’s the chance of a school like this getting involved in a school shooting then there’s no telling what schools are safe…no-one’s safe.”

“He didn’t even enter the school, they were outside on the playground. I don’t know…” her voice disappeared again. After a pause, she sighed, “What a world.”

“Knowing that within the hour of when I was supposed to be working at school with the students, and again, I work a total of there four to five hours a week, that a potentially deranged 14 year-old-boy came to the school and shot at students outside of the school.

“I take my students outside, if it’d been a couple hours later that easily could have been me and my specific students. Just the idea that that could happen to anyone is really haunting.”

As we talked more, she shared a strange thought she had had last week while leading the children she teaches through the hallways of Townville Elementary. “I was thinking to myself as I walked down the hall with them, how lucky I was to be at a school where they were never in danger of a school shooting. I felt like that because it’s in the middle of nowhere, but I guess it was an ignorant thought.”

She paused then continued, “At the time, it just felt like it’s such a small, innocent, safe place. Just like Clemson feels safe, even though we hear about things that go on. Even with robberies or crimes we hear about sometimes around Clemson, we still feel safe walking home at night because it’s the idea that we’re in a small town in South Carolina.

“A place where nothing bad can ever happen to us, whereas this summer when I worked as a teacher in New York, it felt like something bad could easily happen to me. Today just demonstrates that this can happen anywhere, but that doesn’t mean we should be scared everywhere. It just means that we have to come to the terms with the fact that we cant prevent things like this from happening and we just have to keep going. We can’t live in fear, because that doesn’t do any good.”

Despite the traumatic events, she is no less determined to be a teacher. “The irony of the situation is an hour ago I got my contract for the school I’m going to be teaching at in New York after I graduate. I just got the official contract sent to me. If anything, I took that as a sign that I can’t let this get me down and I can’t give up my dream of becoming a teacher because I’m scared that my students and I are in danger. I still want to be a teacher, even more now, but I’m scared.”

Townville is a minor shooting compared to Sandy Hook or Columbine, but that’s the problem. “What’s so upsetting to me is that when we hear about school shootings now, it’s not surprising anymore. I think that’s wrong. It’s not our fault, but I think it’s wrong that we’ve gone down such a path in our country that hearing about kids getting shot, unless it’s directly affecting your community, won’t be thought about too much because it’s so commonplace now.

“I’m very passionate about the idea that we shouldn’t talk about the shooter. We should only talk about the victims. By talking about the shooter, we end up glorifying them. If you hear the name of the shooter more than you hear the name of Jacob Hall, then you’re giving power to the shooters. That can’t happen.

“We’re not safe right now, but seeing how communities rally and care about a little, tiny school like Townville is the only thing we can do to fight against senseless acts like this. We have to just be there for each other.”

Although she had a surreal realization that the job she’s always wanted is becoming more and more dangerous in our warped society, Ellie still sees the good in the world.

“Smaller communities like Townville are prone to rally around each other more. I know that there are already pages for donations to the family of Jacob Hall.

“It’s a very rural community, it’s less than 4,000 people and the school has 300 people. There’s a greater capacity to come together. They live near each other, they’ve grown up together, they all go to the same churches. You can tell they’re all very close. They know everything about each other. I think that will really help during this time.”

I asked her what kind of long term effects this experience could have on her as a person and as a teacher. She seemed surprised. “It’s hard to tell what effects this could have on me. It just happened today and it’s still very fresh. Right now, it feels like it’s reinvigorated my desire to work with kids and make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“It’s really hard not to look at the statistics and know how prevalent violence against children is and how widespread senseless acts of violence in general are in our world and not lose hope. But then you see the way the Townville families support each other and how everyone rallies as a community and that’s where you have to look, instead of the statistics you have to look at the reactions to give you hope again.”

“It’s tough.”

Support Jacob Hall’s family here to help them through this difficult time. He is still in critical condition at Greenville Memorial Hospital.