(Officers leave Rigby Middle School after a shooting in Rigby, Idaho, on Thursday, May 6, 2021. Associated Press)
RIGBY, Idaho — The Idaho math teacher who stopped a school shooting by intercepting a sixth-grade girl with a gun spoke for the first time about what happened.
Krista Gneiting is a math teacher at Rigby Middle School. In an exclusive interview, she told ABC News that her class was getting ready for final exams on a Thursday morning two weeks ago when she heard a gunshot echo from down the hall.
“I got up and I walked to my door and I looked out and I just saw one person in the hallway quite a ways down and it was our janitor and I shut the door and I came back in and heard two more shots,” Gneiting said.
“So I just told my students, ‘We are going to leave, we’re going to run to the high school, you’re going to run hard, you’re not going to look back and now is the time to get up and go.'”
Police said the shooter, a sixth grade student, brought a handgun to the school in her backpack.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said the girl shot and injured three people, two students and an adult. According to investigators, she shot two victims in the hallway before moving outside to shoot the third victim.
Gneiting said in between the lockdown and evacuations, she heard a boy say, “Ouch, I’m shot.”
While helping him, she then saw the girl with a handgun.
“It was a little girl and my brain couldn’t quite grasp that, I just knew when I saw that gun, I had to get the gun,” she said.
“I just walked up to her and I put my hand over her hand, I just slowly pulled the gun out of her hand and she allowed me to,” she said. “She didn’t give it to me but she didn’t fight. And then after I got the gun, I just pulled her into a hug because I thought, this little girl has a mom somewhere that doesn’t realize she’s having a breakdown and she’s hurting people.”
Prosecutors told ABC the girl remains in custody, where she faces formal charges. They said the girl accused in the school shooting lives in the nearby city of Idaho Falls.