Tammie and her family were just walking out the door to head to the movie theater when they heard the buzzing sound of helicopters overhead. It struck her husband as odd, and so he told the kids to wait a second as he checked it out. And then the second he stepped outside, he heard what Tammie, who requested we not use her last name for privacy reasons, said sounded like “firecrackers on the driveway”: the gunshots.

They hurried their kids — ages three, six and eight — back inside and into an interior room away from any windows. After a while, Tammie and her husband stepped out on the front porch and shielded themselves against the brick wall, trying to listen to what was going on. Their neighbor was stealthily moving in and out of their yard and the yard of the family next door, barefoot, and was running at cars who were headed to the Methodist church on Memorial Drive for Sunday service, telling them to turn around — there's a man with a gun shooting at everyone. Tammie and her husband saw him crouch behind their neighbor's tree, in what looked like a military position — and just then, the gunman fired from more than a quarter mile away and struck her neighbor's car and her own white truck. The windows shattered into pieces on the driveway.

Tammie and her husband rushed back inside and hurried the kids to an even more insulated room. They turned on the movie Ice Age to distract them and stayed hidden for the next hour. Her six-year-old told her, “Mom, I'm too young to die.”