As students hid behind their desks and doors during the latest deadly school shooting in the United States, they pulled out their cell phones.
It was just before 10:30 a.m. Wednesday that Becky Van Der Walt received a text message from her son that no parent wants to receive.
“I think there’s a school shooting,” wrote Van Der Walt’s son Henry, a junior at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, according to messages shared with ABC News. “We heard gunshots and police screaming… We’re all on strict lockdown.”
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About eight minutes later, Henry sent another message to his mother with three simple words: “I love you.”
Around the same time Wednesday, Erin Clark, also a parent of an Apalachee High School student, saw a disturbing text message appear on her phone from her son, Ethan.
“A school shooting right now… I’m scared,” Ethan, a high school student, wrote to his mother. “I’m not kidding, please.”
When Clark responded that she was quitting work, Ethan also responded with just three words: “I love you.”
Sonya Turner had been home less than an hour Wednesday after dropping off her 15-year-old daughter at Apalachee High School when she, too, received a disturbing text message.
“It’s a real lockdown,” Turner’s second-grade daughter, Abby, wrote to her mother from biology class. “I don’t know how to explain it…I heard gunshots, but not anymore.”
As Abby and her classmates texted their parents Wednesday morning, unsure of what was about to happen, a 14-year-old student allegedly opened fire at Apalachee High School, killing four and wounding nine.
The 14-year-old student accused of opening fire at the school has been charged with four counts of murder, with more charges expected, Georgia Bureau of Investigation officials said Thursday. The motive for the shooting is not known.
Two teachers and two students were killed in the shooting: math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, 39; math teacher Cristina Irimie, 53; and students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, authorities said.
SEE ALSO: Georgia high school shooting: What we know about the 4 victims
Richard Aspinwall, Christina Irimie, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were all victims of the Apalachee High School shooting on September 4.
Apalachee High School/Family Photo/GoFundMe via CNN Newsource
Eight students and a teacher were injured, authorities said, but all are expected to survive.
Becky Van Der Walt told ABC News she was “terrified” to receive a text message about a school shooting from her son, who she was reunited with later that day.
Ethan Clark also survived the shooting, as did Turner’s two daughters, Abby and Isabella, a 14-year-old freshman at Apalachee High School.
Turner told ABC News that as soon as her daughters’ texts about the shooting came in, just before 10:30 a.m., she called her husband to come to the school, telling him, “This is real. Go. Go. Go.”
For the next hour, Turner, also the mother of a 9-year-old boy, said she stayed glued to her phone, keeping her daughters calm, making sure they had safe places to hide and praying with them.
“Where are you hiding?” Turner asks in a text message, and Abby responds, “I’m behind a long desk.”
“Is there an extra closet or something you can get into,” Turner asks Abby in a later message.
“No, I can’t move… I’m not allowed to move.(v)“e,” Abby replies, prompting Turner to tell her, “Okay. Pray…” while texting prayers.
In another message, Turner asks her daughters to just keep communicating with her so she knows they are alive, writing: “Keep talking to me.”
Isabella, who had just started her freshman year of high school, texted her mother: “I love you. Mom, I’m scared.”
Turner said that throughout the morning, she received text messages not only from her daughters inside the school, but also from other parents who were also communicating with their children and helping each other as they intermittently lost communication.
“(A friend) has two children (at Apalachee High School)“She couldn’t get one of them on the phone, and it turns out he was in the class of the first teacher who was pronounced dead,” Turner said. “She texted and texted and couldn’t get a hold of him, and that’s because he was trying to save his teacher.”
In another instance, Turner said she temporarily lost communication with Isabella.
“It was a moment of complete panic, but her phone had been confiscated, the whole class, they took their phones,” Turner said, adding. “But when they got them all to the football field, she was able to contact a friend who was able to send me a message … so I knew she was safe.”
Turner, who is recovering from abdominal surgery, said she ended up walking more than a mile from her home to the high school, where after several hours she was able to reunite with her daughters.
“Abby keeps hearing the gunshots, and now their question is, how are we going to get back to school?” Turner said. “Izzy’s stuff is all in her classroom, right where she left it, and she’s like, ‘Mom, I don’t want to go get it. I don’t want to go back in that room.’”
ABC News’ Caroline Guthrie contributed to this report.
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