John Romano (39:20)
Yeah. So I get to the point where I have the shotgun out of its case, and I even remember there is, you know, a bell goes off as one class ends. And I remember hearing students filling the hallway, and there's even students coming into the bathroom, but I'm sitting there in the stall still, and I'm just sitting there kind of like, okay, I'm going to wait for everybody to leave. I'm going to wait for everybody to get out. You know, I don't want to, like, come out and have people being right there. I waited a couple minutes, and as the next class period begins, hear the bell, the hallways, everything's pretty empty. And I get out of the bathroom, and as I'm leaving the bathroom, though, with the shotgun in my hands, with it down at my hip, pointing forward, there's a kid who is now coming around the corner to enter the bathroom. He now comes around the corner and is only a couple feet away from me. It's standing right there in front of me, like, frozen. And he's the first person to see me that morning. You know, what kid imagines that that's what they're gonna see. So he freezes in front of me, and he. He says, this can't be real. And, you know, and he. And he's just stuck there for a moment, and I just remember, I. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He just kind of, like, turns around and runs. I come around the corner, and he had already dived into the first classroom he could. And now I'm at the end of the hallway, and I'm looking down, and now I see two students rounding the other end of the hallway. So they're about 40ft down. And they come around the corner to again see this horrific sight of me with a shotgun at my hips, pointed right, you know, right down the hallway, right towards where they are. And I remember one of them even yelling out, oh, shit. And I remember that specifically because there's. All these classrooms are in this hallway. There's a teacher who, to her, she doesn't know what's going on. It's Any other day, any other morning, she hears a student yelling. Oh, I remember her calling out to him, watch your mouth. And that's when, you know, I, I point the shotgun kind of like up and away from where they are. Cuz they're straight up front of me and I point up and away and I fire twice and they just turn and run for their lives. They think that they're about to die. They're terrified. And yeah, so now, now everybody in that hallway, in all the classrooms, they now know something horrific is happening. Yeah, there's just this silence and most of the classroom doors are all shut. You know, I didn't try to open up any of them or anything like that. I'm just walking down the hall, just taking my time. And I remember just seeing this one door wide open and you know, I just kind of walk over to it again. I wanted people to see me. I wanted them to see, you know, everything that was going on. And so I stood in this doorway and I looked in and I look in and I see everybody. They're all, they're all hiding from me. They're all hiding underneath their desks. And I remember there's the teacher, she's at the front of the class and she's underneath this table that she had. And we just kind of lock eyes for a second and she's just full of tear and she cries out, oh Lord. And I'm just kind of looking around and I felt nothing. I hate to say it, I felt nothing. And I remember, you know, this one girl, she kind of pops her head up and she's just looking at me with not only like pain and terror, but also confusion because she was like a friend of a friend. And I just been out with a bunch of friends, friends, you know, a couple nights beforehand. And I turn around and I just walk out and I start walking back down the hall. I'm just kind of ready, you know, ready to die. I'm not trying to do anything now. I'm just kind of like, all right, you know, it's just moments from. I'm sure the police are on their way. But before the police arrive, the assistant principal, he had been, you know, further down in the school and he had heard everything going on. He thought that somebody was setting off, you know, firecrackers or doing something stupid. He came to investigate, not realizing what was actually happening. But when he came around that one corner, he sees me walking away and he was extremely brave and he ran up behind me and you know, I'm still Just kind of. This whole time I've just been, you know, walking around, shotgun down on my waist. So he comes up and he grabs around me, the barrel on one, then the stock on the other, and he just kind of like, bear hugs me, you know, in between the gun and himself. And I'm a big guy, but he was a big guy, too, and he's just like, holding tight onto me to control me, to stop me. And. And at first I just kind of like, I'm caught off guard. I'm caught by surprise. And I'm trying to, like, you know, like, push the gun out, but I can't. I start to, like, try to, like, shake him off my back, you know, my fingers on the trigger. And unfortunately now as I start to, like, twist and turn, the gun goes off, and there's a teacher coming up behind us to help. And I wouldn't learn until later on that the teacher was shot by that third round that went off. You know, I just shot somebody and didn't even know it until later on. And I'm trying to get this guy off my back, and I can't. So eventually I let go of the shotgun and I just say, fine, I give up. And that's it. He just kind of grabs me and pulls me over to this one teacher's office. I still remember the door was closed and he's knocking, and I still remember the man was crying, the assistant principal, you know, he. He's telling him, he's like, he's okay, I got him. I. It's over. And, yeah, so, I mean, they just bring me into this office, you know, tell me to lie down, and he basically just, like, sat on my back and waited for the cops. And sure enough, you know, like, the cops came rearing and ready to go. If. If I had faced off with them, I would have been dead pretty quick. But instead, I got arrested and I went off to prison.