DEREK: I was looking down
the barrel of his gun. And at that point,
we made eye contact. And that was probably one of
the scariest moments in my life. KIM: I couldn't get my
seat belt to release. And then all of a sudden the
bus shifted a little more. And then I got scared. I got really, really scared. COLIN: Bang, bang, bang. And then all of a sudden
one of those bangs hits you. Move with the force
of the bullets, just act like a rag doll, and
just hopefully he'll go away. DEREK: You go into almost
as good versus evil mode. You have to prevail. You have to either
shut that door again, or you don't survive. [music playing] I came into work
at about 8:00 or so, or slightly before,
as is my norm. And I started working on
a proposal I was writing. And while I was working
on that proposal. There was a call that came
in that there had been a double homicide on campus. It's quite startling,
because to have a homicide on the university
campus is very unusual. My staff and I
talked about this. We were shocked. But we felt that it
was a police matter, and then the police
would essentially take care of things. [music playing] I get there about five minutes
before the class started. And everything seemed
pretty normal, nothing out of the ordinary. I sat about 6 feet
from the door, so maybe two rows
back from the door. So I had pretty much
an easy eye line to it. About 15 or 10 minutes
into the class, somebody came in, like sort
of peeked their head in. It's pretty common, like a
student looking for their class or getting lost. But it seemed sort
of ordinary at first because it was halfway
through the semester, and everybody sort of knows
where the classes are by now. And what it really seemed sort
of really out of the ordinary was when he looked in the
second time, which was probably like no more than
5 or 10 seconds after you looked in the first. [music playing] Everything was it
was perfectly normal. Nothing was going wrong until
we heard a bunch of loud bangs. And the bangs, we thought
were from construction. There was a lot of construction
going on in neighboring buildings. We honestly thought
nothing of it. The teacher, however, I think
knew exactly immediately what that sound was. I remember looking at her face
and her face just dropping. She went to the door, opened
the door to look outside to see what was going on. And immediately,
she shut the door, told us to get on the
ground underneath our desks, and somebody called 9-1-1. And at that moment,
it was, you know-- it's serious, something very
bad happening right now. [music playing] ISHWAR: There were a
couple of faculty members who ran down the hallways. There was a secretary
who was fired upon. When the secretary warned
us about the gunshots right around the corner from
us, I locked the door. But, of course, we
have glass doors. So I suppose locking
the door in a sense was simply a security blanket. We were all quite aware that
the doors were not particularly useful against an onslaught. [music playing] The first class that he
went to was across the hall. We heard the initial shots,
maybe 15 or 20 of them. No more than 5 seconds
later, our door opens. The gunman entered our room. The first person he
shot was our professor, who was in the front
of the classroom. That was like just
overwhelmingly just shocking, awe, that our professor could
fall that easily, that he was dead in almost an instant. That sent everybody
into this sense of shock that nobody really knew
what to do at that point. So everybody just sort of
scrambled after that happened and just hoped for
the best I guess. [music playing] DEREK: The gunman was probably
about 6 feet away from me. He was still at the sort
of entrance of the door and had a clear shot on pretty
much everybody in the class. I don't remember anything other
than like the deafening sound of gunshots. That sort of drowned
out all of the screams, I think, in my mind. It was just pretty much the
repetitive sound of gunshots over and over. Then he sort of
swung the gun around to the side of
classroom I was on. And at that point,
we made eye contact. And that was probably one of
the scariest moments in my life. [music playing] As we were coming across
the bridge and stuff, the kids were doing the honking
gesture for the semi truck. And he was honking at them, and
he was waving to us and stuff. And the kids love that. They do it all the time. There's a truck next to us. And the bus was a little
further ahead and he sped up. And then he looked over
to see what we were doing. And we're all like, and
everybody was yelling, honk, honk. And my mom got to
see him, because he was right window to window. And she went like this to
him, and he was just like. He was pretty much
right next to me at as we were approaching
over the lock and dam. And then the next
thing you know, the bridge started swaying. It was almost like it
was a suspension bridge. And it started swaying back
and forth, back and forth. And all of a sudden, it was just
loud rumbling, like, you know, something was falling. [music playing] The first reaction is like,
you know, whatever's happening, I need to hang on, and I need
to keep this bus straight and I need to have
my foot on the brake. I looked over to my
left, because I thought the semi truck was
hitting the bus. And I looked over and
it wasn't hitting us. And I looked over to
the right, and I just was like I don't know
what was happening. And I was getting know scared. And I looked up,
and my mom was-- we were all like bouncing, and
my mom was over in the seat like bouncing up and down. And we couldn't see nothing. And it was gone, the truck. [music playing] I remember hearing someone
scream, the bridge is falling. It was a lot like
a roller coaster. You know, you feel weightless. And I remember reaching for
the seat in front of me, like I was going to brace
myself or catch myself. But it was just like a freefall. The kids weren't-- they
didn't know what was going on. They didn't-- it was kind of
like nobody knew what was going on. Things just kind of started
falling apart around us. You're hitting things,
and things are hitting you. It was really just
a weird noise. I kind of got scared because I
didn't know what was happening. I thought that we were
going in the water, we were going to die. DEREK: When we came
into the class, I think he had a pretty
well planned out system of how he would kill everybody. He shot the professor
first and then shot whoever is closest to him. The gunman was probably
about 6 feet away from me. The first thing I
looked at was the Glock. And the second thing that I
looked at it was his face. There was almost just a sort
of emptiness in his face, like you can look
into somebody's eyes and sort of see like
their expressions and how they're feeling. But with his, it
wasn't early anger. It was just more methodical,
like he was determined to do something. He was here for a reason, and
he was going to try and kill as many of us as he could. He made eye contact with me. And I was looking down
pretty much the gun, the barrel of his gun. It was slow motion in my mind. But in all, it probably was
less than like 3 seconds that I had to react. I saw the bullet come out. And at that point, like
I slid under my desk. So I thought I was safe, but
the bullet went through my arm. I sort of scrambled for
the back of the room. I put as much sort
of desk and objects in the way of him
and me as I could. And then after that, he
walked into the other side of the room-- not running, not sprinting,
just calm, methodical, and then shot at the
people over there. [music playing] DEREK: After he had
left our classroom, we heard more shots
down the hallway. So all the gunshots
were in fairly close proximity to the
class that we were in. And we could tell that they
weren't getting very much more distant than maybe 30 or
40 feet down the hall. I wasn't really thinking
about anything else, just how in the world can
I make it out here alive? ISHWAR: There were
several students who work in my laboratory
who were due in. And my first thought
was of their safety. I contacted one
on his cell phone. And I asked him then to contact
some of the other students and form a phone chain system. The noises were now
becoming much more urgent down the hallway, because the
assassin was making his way down the hall. I thought that it was
time to call my wife. Honey, I'm in trouble. You're my spouse,
you're my partner. Maybe you should know I'm
in a difficult situation. Let's see how this goes. [music playing] COLIN: It was just boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom, and then quiet. And then we heard them-- it's again much
louder, much closer. I was the one who called
9-1-1 from the room. I don't remember why. I just pulled it out
and got on the phone and just got underneath the
desks with the operator. And then it was soon after
that Cho entered our room. I remember seeing the
professor move towards the door as everyone went
down to the ground. And then I turned and faced
the back of the room from where I was positioned. And I don't know who
exactly was hit first. [music playing] Boom, boom, boom. And then it went quiet. And then you could
hear the clips change and him dropping clips out. He seemed to be very, very
familiar with his weapon, and he was very quick with
his changing of his clips. You could hear him
walking around. He didn't say a word. No one else said
a word in my room. There were a few screams
when shots were fired, but there was no yelling. There was no communication. I kind of jumped,
dived sideways. And we made it underneath
the seat of one and kind of the
table of another one. From the angle that
he approached me, I was pretty much covered
up, all of my main parts, with only my extremities
sticking out. I completely forgot
about the phone I was on at the current
time with the police. I remember when I
was on the phone with her describing where I
was, and then as soon as Cho entered the room, I
didn't say a word. Obviously, I didn't want
to be talking on the phone with this man in the room. And I remember hearing the
operator on the other line still talking and me doing
all that I can to cover it up and not have that heard. I heard bang, bang, bang, bang. And then all of a sudden I felt
a very sharp feeling in my leg. And then in my hips, I felt
the same kind of feeling. I thought of getting shot by
a gun would have been the most excruciating pain that
you could ever imagine. But I felt very, very numb. [music playing] COLIN: When he shot
me the first time, I actually threw the
phone from my hand and threw it out as I
was kind of reacting to the force of the bullet. And then it was quickly
picked up by a girl next to me and then covered up. I heard bang, bang,
bang again, and then a clip change, more gunshots,
and then the door closed. And he was out,
and he was gone-- or has gone down the hallway. [music playing] COLIN: I looked over at
another part of the room and saw Christina
hunched in the corner kind of like in
the same position that you'd be in for a
tornado drill or hurricane drill against the wall. And she was sandwiched in
by two other people who-- I don't know how to say this,
but there were a lot more red than other people. So I knew that there were
people in worse situations. You could still hear
him down the hallway when he was doing visiting
other rooms again. But none of us moved. We stayed where we were. And we didn't think he
was going to come back. [music playing] You didn't even
know how to react. It happened so
quick and so fast. My main concern was wherever
we were going to land, we weren't going to
tip over, hopefully, and we were going
to land straight. And I was going to have
my foot on the brake so we didn't roll anywhere
or on top of anything. [music playing] KIM: We bounced, and
then we came back up. And then we bounced
again, and we landed. And I held my foot on the
brake and the steering wheel. And I looked over, and I looked
around, and I'm just in shock not knowing what's going on. The dust came across, and the
kids just started screaming. Once we finally
came to a rest, there was screaming
for a couple seconds. And then it was just silence. I remember tasting
blood in my mouth. And I remember kind of
feeling like gravelly, like I had sand in my
mouth type of feeling. And I remember spitting and
pieces in my teeth coming out. I just went black. And I kind of had a blackout
though, because then I fell down in my seat. And I tried to get back
up, but I couldn't breathe. And I was still laying down. And I'm like, mom, mom. And she couldn't hear me. I knew she couldn't. And I couldn't move. My seat belt had me locked
back into my seat tight. [music playing] KIM: And I looked down and
I seen Julie in the doorway. She was upside down backwards
with her legs against the door. And I didn't know what was
happening or what happened. She actually flipped over
the seat and the seat that was in front of us, which it
went down to the staircase. I heard glass shatter. I saw her foot in the doorway. And then I saw her one
foot like over her head. And she was all like
in a ball, and her arm was like hanging up. And I thought she died. I did see the blood. And then the window was broken. But she didn't move for
a second, so I thought, you know, for the worse. And I said Julie, Julie? Are you OK, Julie? [music playing] At this point, a lot of
the desks are overturned, or there's people in the aisles
and backpacks and everything else. It was just like the class
had been emptied almost, but at the same time there's
still a lot of bodies there. And I just remember
seeing like the darkness of like the gunpowder
and gunshot residue still like in the air. You can almost smell blood, like
sort of that iron-y smell that goes along with blood. So there was a lot of
it in our classroom. After the initial
sort of getting over the shock of what's actually
happening, once you comprehend that, you definitely
go into sort of this adrenaline-fueled
survival mode. I realized after I
had time to look down that my arm was bleeding. And I could see like-- I could feel the pain. I was able to sort
of unzip my jacket and tie my belt on my arm as
a tourniquet to sort of help stop the bleeding. And then with my
other hand, I was able to sort of call
the 9-1-1- operator and sort of inform
them of the situation. [music playing] I was pretty much the
first one off the floor after he had left our classroom. And we heard more
shots down the hall. So I figured there was
time for me to make it up to the front of the classroom
and sort of prevent him from getting back in. I was able to climb
on top of the desk and make my way to the front of
the classroom fairly quickly. Another person went around
and checked everybody else to see if they were OK and
sort of help stop the bleeding. And another person called
for help out the windows and tried to look for something
that we could barricade the door with. The door was pretty flimsy. It wasn't like anything
metal or anything else. So it was just a
typical wooden door. There wasn't anything
in the class that was really feasible as far as
pulling in front door and try and hope that it
wouldn't open again. We pretty much figured
our best chance was just wedging our feet in between the
door and the base of the floor and hoping that that would
hold as sort of a barricade. After we heard the
gunshots down the hall, we sort of knew that
the approximate time he took in our classroom
that he'd probably take in those other
classrooms as well. So we knew we had maybe a
30-second window to figure out what we could do next and try
and make it out of there alive. [music playing] COLIN: You could still
hear him down the hallway when he was visiting
other rooms again. But none of us moved. Just generally being very
afraid he's going to come back, very afraid he's
going to hear us. On his first trip to
each of the rooms, he kind of suppressed
everybody and put them down on the ground, make sure they
weren't going to go anywhere. Then he more methodically went
through each individual aisle. I remember looking
at the windows and thinking about the
windows as a possible way out. But there was no way that the
windows would have worked. He would have been in
a room too quickly. And we had all been standing
up in front of the windows. We would have been
in a worse situation. In some of the
quiet moments, you know, with the dead silence,
that nobody speaking, no one's saying anything, I do remember
hearing cell phone vibrations going on in backpacks and
just hearing those vibrate and nobody answering
them or anything. They were just vibrating,
get quiet again. [music playing] ISHWAR: Three minutes
into the episode, I saw the SWAT team
running by my window. I could see a police officer
behind a white pickup truck with his gun drawn
pointing towards my window. I remember desperately thinking
that I want those police officers inside, not outside. [music playing] I was shot in my upper
right arm through the bicep. And then Katlyn was
shot in her right hand. And I think a piece of a
bullet grazed her head. So she was bleeding from
her hand and her hand. And I was just
bleeding from my arm. She had her body forced
up against near where the handle was. And I had my body sort of laid
across the floor, pushing up, with the upper part of my body
near where the hinges were. You heard the last gunshots down
the hall and all of a sudden, like 10 seconds later, our
door handle is turning, and the doors open
about 6 inches. And that was just terrifying
mentally and emotionally. And you just suffered through
probably one of the worst sights that you've
ever seen in your life. And then to have the opportunity
for that to happen again, and you being in such close
range to the gunman that you probably won't survive again. You go into almost as
good versus evil mode, and like you have to prevail. You have to either
shut that door again or you don't survive. You probably won't make
it out of there alive. [music playing] I held my foot on the
brake and the steering wheel. And I looked over,
and I looked around, because there was a big dust
cloud from the beginning when it first landed. And I looked down and I
seen Julie in the doorway. She didn't move for a second. So I thought, you
know, for the worse. And I said Julie, Julie? Are you OK, Julie? And that's when she's
like, Kim, what happened? What happened? And she was so faint
when she said it. I literally
thought she was dead. And then she started moving. And I was so thankful
that she wasn't dead. [music playing] JIMMY: Jeremy, one of
the other youth workers, got up and opened the back door. And we started getting
all the kids out. I was in the very
front of the bus. So all the kids were
getting out in front of me. They all got out one by one. We were at the incline. So then I figured we'd
probably roll backwards. I knew that if I let
my foot off the brake, the bus was going
to roll, and it was going to roll on top of them
children that were getting off the bus. [music playing] My kids were crying.
They're like, mom, are you OK? What happened?
What happened? Mom, are you OK? They weren't going to leave. They wanted to stay with me. And they kept telling me,
mom, we want to stay with you. We want to stay with you. She told us we have
to get off the bus. And I said, no, I can't. So I had to turn
around and told them, I said, you need to get
your bus off this bus now. And that's when I
wanted to lose it. I wanted to cry. But I held it together. Because I knew if they seen me
cry, that would make it worse. But I knew that if I
were to not make it, that the kids all made
it and they were OK. And it was OK with me if I
didn't make it through it. I would have been OK. [music playing] I saw all these people
around me crying and hurt. And that's when I realized
that this was a much bigger thing than just our school bus. It was a really, really
overwhelming kind of sense of loss and despair, I guess. I remember seeing
Kim's daughter crying. And I asked her
why she was crying. I started crying. And then Jimmy came up. And I'm just like, Jimmy,
my mom's on the bus. Someone has to go get her. In an accident,
usually your seat belt has locks so that you don't
get thrown forward or what not. It keeps you in your spot. It locked so tight that it
was like against me so tight that I couldn't move forward
or move my body at all. And I kept trying to release
it, and it wouldn't release. [music playing] JIMMY: I remember seeing smoke. There was a lot of smoke. I don't know if
it was in flames. You know what they say, where
there's smoke, there's fire. And I kept telling her, Kim,
you gotta get off the bus. You gotta get off. And she kept telling
me that she couldn't, that she was in a
lot of pain, and she didn't think she could move. And I couldn't move. My seat belt had me locked
back into my seat tight. And I looked at her,
and I was like, Kim, you got to get off the bus now,
because I didn't know if it was going to fall over. And there's a semi next
to us that was on fire. And I didn't know if that
was going to blow up. I was pounding on it,
and it wouldn't release. And then all of a sudden the
bus shifted a little more. And then I got scared. I got really, really scared. DEREK: And all the sudden
our door handle is turning and the door is
open about 6 inches. He was sort of forcing
it with his shoulder. So he wasn't able to
really fire his gun at all. Katlyn and I sort of
communicated without words. And I think that helped because
he wasn't really able to tell where we were
through our voices. He just knew we were
somewhere behind the door. I could him sort through sort
of that crack, the narrow crack in the hinges, and
see what he was doing. He had on a black leather jacket
over top of sort of an ammo vest that he stored a
lot of the magazines in. I knew that he was going
to fire into the door. At that point, I wasn't
really going to watch and see if I was going to die and watch
the process I was going to die. We backed our bodies up a lot
and then tried to get away of the bullets coming through. And he stepped back and fired
probably approximately three shots into the door. Fortunately, I don't think any
of those bullets hit anybody. Most of the bullets were
perpendicular to the door. So they either went out the
windows or just hit the wall. Then we heard more
gunshots down the hall, so we figured he wasn't
still outside of our door. [music playing] ISHWAR: The initial
gunshots were very violent. It was like a da da
da da da da sound. It was very sharp. The very violent noise subsided. And it seemed to become
much more deliberate. But it always seemed
to come in pairs. Da da, da da, da da. [music playing] On his first trip
to each of the rooms, he kind of suppressed
everybody and put them down on the ground, make sure they
weren't going to go anywhere. Then he more methodically went
through each individual aisle. And I remember hearing the
systematic boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He'd walked almost all the way
to the back of the room close to the windows and then
looped around to the front and come down close
to the door side on our side to make
kind of a U shape. [music playing] COLIN: I caught
one glimpse of him. I caught his boots, his pants. He was wearing a white shirt. And he had a holster
over each shoulder. And I never saw his face. And that's all I wanted to see. I'm glad I didn't
get to look at him. I think if I would've
made eye contact with him, it would've been a more-- I don't know-- personal thing. I would just try to play dead
and act like I wasn't there. The shots got a lot
closer to where I was. I remember hearing
them a lot louder. He was standing
basically at my feet. Probably the scared-est I've
ever been in my entire life was at that moment
lying on the ground. You just hear bang, bang, bang,
and then also all of sudden one of those bangs hits you. I didn't want him to
know that I was there. I just played dead, move with
the force of the bullets, just act like a rag doll, and
just hopefully he'll go away. Just waiting for it to
be over, just saying, just please stop, please stop. I believe it was my limp
body flailing around which made him believe that
he got me with that one and he could move on. ISHWAR: There was a loud blast. So this is into
the eighth minute. And at that time, all
the noise subsided. I saw the SWAT team
running by my window. And there were now
more police officers converging onto the building. DEREK: After we didn't hear any
gunshots for maybe 30 seconds, we heard the police
finally in our hall. And we could hear them yelling,
come out with your hands up, things like that. I sort of stuck my
head outside the door and saw the police like
all at the end of the hall with their guns sort of
focused down the hall and trying to figure
out where he was. I heard police
officers in the hallway. I heard them shout. And it was very confusing,
because in the beginning, the shouts said, well, I
found two in the bathroom. And I thought, well, perhaps
there were two gunmen, and they found the gunman. There was another voice
that said I found two more. They're not saying much. And at that time, a sense
of dread came over me. The police officers
kept shouting, I found some here, I
found something there. And the sense of dread
sort of increased. [music playing] COLIN: I remember
hearing his bullets. And then I remember
hearing police outside. That's when I knew that-- I could hear them moving
around outside trying to get in the building somehow. I heard his footsteps. I heard him moving around. I think I remember hearing
him move towards the window and looking out the window. So he could obviously hear
the police coming in, trying to get into the building. I thought that he was waiting,
because it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
and then quiet. So I thought he was waiting
in front of our room, and he was waiting
for the police. [musi] DEREK: After we heard the
police outside of our hall and after I sort of
peeked my head out, I think we all sort of started
to discuss whether we should try and make a
run for it or not. At this point, the police are
on the other end of the hall from where we heard the
last gunshots fired. So there's probably
maybe 20 feet between us and the last gunshots
fired and 20 feet between us and the police. So it was sort of like we'd
be caught in the middle if he came out of the room and
started firing at the police. [music playing] As soon as the police came
in the door, they opened it up. They said shooter down,
shooter down immediately. And I was like, he's dead. How did this happen? I remember being shot, and then
hearing one or two more shots. And then it was just silent. [music playing] He could obviously
hear the police coming in trying to get into
the building, which is when he believed that his
run was over, it was time to go. And he killed himself. I knew that once the police
were there that I was safe, that everything was OK. I was concerned that we were
all laying on the floor, not moving around, that they
wouldn't find someone that was alive. I remember telling him,
Christina was over there and she was alive, telling
them Emily was there, they were alive. I was alive. And then I remember hearing
them go through their triage and saying this person is blue. This person is green. This person is red. And then I hear this person's
black, black tag, black tag, black tag. And then I heard black tag. And I said, oh, my God, that's
like people have actually been killed. [music playing] JIMMY: I remember seeing smoke. And I looked at her
and I was like, Kim, you gotta get off the bus now. There was a semi next
to us that was on fire. And I don't know if that
was going to blow up or what that was going to do. And I couldn't move. My seat belt had me locked
back into my seat tight. She kept telling me that she
couldn't because her back hurt and her legs were hurt. And then the bus shifted. When the bus shifted, it
kind of gave a little slack, and then I hit my seat
belt again and it released. So then I was able to get up. And I used Jimmie's
back like this. I had my harms like
this on his back. And I leaned on him. And I grabbed on and just
kind of gave her support. I didn't carry her so much as
it was give her the support she needed to be able
to stand on her own and help her down the aisle. I walked probably about, oh,
about 500 feet, and I fell. I couldn't walk anymore. I hurt so bad. He came out with my mom, and
I was happy that he did that. And I'm really thankful
that he went on the bus, and he got my mom off,
because I wouldn't have a mom. You can hear the helicopters
and the ambulances and the fire trucks. You could hear all the
sirens going off and that. And people just kind of
frantically running everywhere. Well, then the next
thing you know, I look up and the semi truck is engulfed
in smoke and flames and I said, the guy's in the truck still. The guy is in the
semi truck still. You got to get him out. I completely balled
then too, because I knew he was in the truck. And he was not going
to make it out. I'm just like, no, he
couldn't have died. He was the one who waved
hi to us and honked at us and we had a blast
and he's now gone. [music playing] JIMMY: It's kind of weird,
because for weeks and months afterwards and still now
people come up to me and say, you're so lucky,
you're so lucky. And at first, I really
struggled with that. I was like, you
know, I'm not lucky. I was in this horrible,
horrible accident. The chances of being on
that bridge and on that bus are so slim to none
that I'm not lucky. I'm unlucky. [music playing] JIMMY: There were so many things
that could have gone wrong that didn't. We fell in the best place we
could have fallen as far as I'm concerned. If we had been 10
feet forward, we would've ended up
like that semi. I survived because of chance. I survived because Kim was able
to keep the bus where she kept it. [music playing] KIM: The bus through
this accident held up extremely well. The damage on the bus
was mainly in the front. All the seats stayed intact. All the kids weren't hurt. They're extremely safe. And I would never have a doubt
in my mind putting my kid's on the school bus, ever. So now I have everybody
in my family still here now. And me and my little brother
are here and so is my mom. So I'm pretty happy
that all of us survived. [music playing] The thought of the event
comes up just about every day. Something will spark
the memory of it. Just to think about
the classmates that I had at the time and
then they're not here anymore, it makes me wonder
why them and not me? [music playing] COLIN: I believe he had
all the cards in his hand. He was in complete
control of the situation. And when we laid the cards
down, some were face up and some were face down. And I was one of the lucky ones. It's something that's happened
in my life that was negative. And I'm just trying to turn that
and not have that be something that defines who I am. [music playing] It's very difficult for
a group of individuals to overcome someone with
automatic weapons, who has planned clinically, who's
brutal, who's lost rationality, who has no concern
for his own safety. He's already made up
his mind that he's going to be a suicide assassin. [music playing] ISHWAR: It takes a
tremendous act of courage to come to the aid of someone
else unprotected, uncertain of what one might find
lurking around the corner. Because of the involvement of
all these people, many of us are here today. And we wouldn't have been. I'm not absolutely sure
that I'd be here speaking about the incident. [music playing] I survived because of quick
reactions, not only of myself, but because of my classmates
and the professors on our floor. In our classroom specifically,
there were four of us who were able to get up and that
were conscious and able to do something to sort of
help prolong our lives. So teamwork definitely
played a huge role not only in my
survival, but maybe in the survival of
other students as well. DEREK: I'm definitely
more appreciation of life. Every day that I go on is
another day that I have gone on and I have survived. When you go through
something like this, it's definitely something that
gives you a new perspective on what is a big
deal and what isn't. I definitely appreciate
every day, every moment, every single small thing
that you experience in life. [audio out]
