Teacher Kaitlin Roig Protected Her Students

During this terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut, there were those who acted heroically to save lives.  One such hero was Victoria Soto (click hereto read about her).  Another was third grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29.   

When Roig heard gunfire Friday morning she doubted that she and her students would survive. Her classroom was the first classroom in the hallway and it had large windows, so she knew they needed to get somewhere safer.  Roig rushed her 15 children into the class bathroom to hide.  “I just knew we had to get in there, I was just telling them it’s going to be all OK, you’re going to be all right,” Roig told ABC News.  She pulled a bookshelf in front of the door to barricade them all inside.

“I told them we had to be absolutely quiet,” Roig said. “Because I was so afraid that if he did come in, he would hear us and he would just start shooting the door. I said there are bad guys out there now, and now we have to wait for the good guys.”

"If they started crying, I would take their face and tell them, 'It's going to be OK,'" Roig continued. "I wanted that to be the last thing they heard, not the gunfire in the hall."

"I thought we were all going to die," she said through tears. "I told the kids I love them and I was so happy they were my students... I said anyone who believed in the power of the prayer, we need to pray and those who don't believe in prayer" think happy thoughts. 

Roig said the gunfire didn’t actually last very long, but even once it stopped she said they weren’t leaving.

“I said we’re not going anywhere, we’re going to stay until someone good gets us out,” she said.

But they didn’t move, even when police started knocking. She worried it could be the gunman trying to lure them out.

“I said don’t believe you, I said you need to put your badges under the door, so they put their badges under the door,” she said. “I said if you’re really a police officer you would have a way in here, you would have a key…so he had the keys and he found the right one.”

It is deeply saddening to imagine what the families of the victims of this tragedy must be going through.  My thoughts and prayers are with these families.  But in the midst of this terrible tragedy, it is amazing to see all of the heroes who overcome their own fears to save lives.