'I crawled down the corridor and hid under the table'
| Date | 07 March 2021 |
| Published date | 07 March 2021 |
Dunblane was a safe, close-knit community. Neighbours were friendly and Joe and I had the freedom to play in the park and walk to school by ourselves.
After we'd waved Mum goodbye at home, we walked the short distance to school and
I remember seeing snowdrops poking through the snow. Joe went off to his class, which was in a prefab structure on the site, and I went to mine, Primary Four, which was a classroom in the main building. The school had a large gym in the middle and a big field at the back.
It was coming up to 9.30am and
our class was walking through a corridor to the music room, called the "GP room", to practise singing for a big assembly later that week. But something wasn't right.
I was standing next to my friend and we saw little holes appearing on the glass in front of us
and chunks of plaster coming out of the walls behind. It never occurred to me we could be in danger. We were like a little pair of old ladies, hands on our hips, complaining it must be the builders upstairs making a mess. I remember seeing a shadowy figure in the gym doorway, across the concrete playground. But only later would I realise this was Thomas Hamilton, dressed in camouflage gear, opening fire on innocent children.
People since claim Hamilton planned to come to the big assembly, with enough ammunition for everyone in the entire school, but he got the wrong day. As he'd run kids'
clubs locally, some families - like tennis star Andy Murray's, who was in my class - knew Hamilton quite well. But I didn't know him.
I don't really recall screaming or shouting, but
I remember lots of people in the corridor suddenly. It seemed dark and our teacher Mrs McTurk told us to crawl on our hands and knees and just get into the next classroom. Once there, she told us to sit on the floor behind the teacher's desk and she stayed with us in the room, but I can't remember whether she was hiding, too. I didn't understand what was happening. I don't know how long we were behind that desk - or whether we were silent. I think it was a policeman who eventually told us it was safe to come out and go back to the
GP room where we waited, bewildered, to be collected by a parent.
It felt like...
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