Heroic teacher Kaitlin Roig did whatever she could to protect students as gunman Adam Lanza stormed Newtown, Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.
In an interview with ABC News, the third grade teacher described how she barricaded all 14 of her students into the bathroom connected to her classroom:
“I put one of my students on top of the toilet," she recalled. "I just knew we had to get in there. I was telling them ‘It’s going to be OK, you’re going to be alright.’"
"I had pulled a bookshelf, before I closed a door, in front of it, so we were completely barricaded in.”
Her quick thinking likely saved the lives of 14 young people and herself Friday morning.
She told students that they had to remain absolutely quiet fearing that the gunman or gunmen might hear them and begin shooting at the bathroom door.
“There are bad guys out there now, we need to wait for the good guys,” she told them.
Adam Lanza killed 26 people at the school, including principal Dawn Hochsprung and 20 children. He also killed his mother and himself, bringing the toll to 28.
The Connecticut school shooting ranks among the worst mass murders in United States history. President Obama will visit Newtown on Sunday.