Haley Betancourt — a freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — joined Fox News’ Martha MacCallum Thursday and gave a first-person account of the tragedy that unfolded at her school Wednesday afternoon.
“We were writing love letters because it was Valentine’s Day… All of a sudden, you hear, ‘what was that?'” Betancourt explained. “All of a sudden, the fire alarm rang and we thought oh, my God. We go outside the classroom. The whole hallway was crowded, you couldn’t move. I was right here, my teacher was right next to me, her classroom was right there. All of a sudden, POP POP POP POP. All of the sudden, you hear this noise in the stairwell and my teacher opens her classroom right away and she’s like, ‘everyone get in.’ If it wasn’t for that, I think we could have all been dead.”
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“Not everyone could make it inside the room. Unfortunately, people ran out so they couldn’t make it,” she continued. “Our teacher and my friends, we saved as many as we could inside the room. I don’t know how fast he got up the stairs, but it felt like he got there like that. All I could hear was BANG BANG.”
Betancourt noted the classroom she was sheltering in was “on the third floor, the highest floor. I felt like he was right there. I think there were about 16 of us in there and thank God, we all survived.”
She then detailed one of the most bone-chilling anecdotes about the shooting the media has covered thus far.
“There was this kid, you could hear him all throughout the hallways. He was saying, ‘please let me in,’ and it was the most heartbreaking thing because we couldn’t let him in, we couldn’t help him. Unfortunately, he passed away.”