Richard Aspinwall, the mathematics teacher and football coach who was one of two teachers killed in Wednesday’s high school shooting in Georgia, was trying to protect the children in his classroom when he was killed.
His attempt to protect the teens in his care was one of the new details that have emerged about the four victims killed in the gun rampage by a student at Apalachee high school, in the small city of Winder.
In addition to Aspinwall, they were fellow mathematics teacher Cristina Irimie, 53, and two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo.
ABC News reported that as the catastrophe began Aspinwall, 39, was teaching a class when banging was heard on lockers adjacent to the classroom. Instead of hiding with his students, the teacher decided to try to protect them by going outside the room.
“My teacher, Coach Aspinwall, he opened the door, and he ran outside to see what’s going on,” Stephanie Reyna, 17, told ABC News.
The sound of gunshots could be heard moments after and Aspinwall was found lying prone in the doorway of the classroom. “He was just there, in the doorway, just laying there. He was trying to crawl back to us … We just think he was trying to get to us,” the student told the TV network.
At the time the shooting erupted, the second teacher, Irimie, was treating her students to a belated celebration for her birthday. “She decided to bake a cake and bring pizza to her class the day she died so she could celebrate her birthday with her kids,” one of Irimie’s family friends, Corneliu Caprar, told CNN.
Irimie was a prominent and much-loved member of the Romanian community in Barrow county, having immigrated to the US more than two decades ago. In addition to being a member of the St Mary’s Romanian Orthodox church, she was a proficient Romanian folk dancer.
The pastor of St Mary’s Romanian Orthodox church, Nicolae Clempus, told Fox 5 in Atlanta that she was “dedicated to children in everything she was doing … She was always joking about things, always laughing. One of the first things everybody will tell you about her is that she was very joyful and happy.”
Support has been streaming in for the families of the two 14-year-old teenagers who died in the carnage. An online fundraiser set up by the sister of Christian Angulo to cover funeral expenses had exceeded $150,000 by Friday, and a separate fundraising page for Mason Schermerhorn had raised a similar amount.
Co-workers of the parents of Mason told of the frantic search they had embarked on when they heard news of the shooting. Family members had posted on social media asking for information about the teenager.
Mason’s older sister, Lilianah, put a message up on one site about his emotional state, saying: “If he is escalated PLEASE use a calm voice with him. Let him know his mom is looking for him, for reassurance.”
Another sister, Alanna, told the Washington Post that he had mild autism. “I was thinking he had just ran away because sometimes when he’s stressed he would run away. Like, to get away from everything.”
The boy had texted his mother from a school restroom at around the time of the rampage, and she was convinced he had survived, only to be told that he was one of the four victims.
“He was a great kid, from what I was told. Loved life, didn’t have any issues with anyone,” the mother’s colleague, Ronald Clark, said.
The second 14-year-old, Christian Angulo, was called by his father murcielaguín, meaning “little bat” in Spanish. The father, Ismael Angulo, said the family had moved to Winder, Georgia, from California “in search of peace”.
The boy’s older sister, Lisette Angulo, wrote on the fundraising page that he was “so loved by many. His loss was so sudden and unexpected, we are truly heartbroken.”
