PHILLIPI, W.Va. — In a situation that would be every teacher’s worst nightmare, Twila Smith kept her cool.
The world studies teacher at Phillip Barbour High School had a pistol put to her head last week when a 14 year-old-student took the classroom of 29 students hostage. Smith recalled the harrowing incident.
“He said he was going to kill people and himself,” she told ABC’s Good Morning America. “And there were times he would actually hold the gun to himself, but briefly. And he put it on about six students. But a lot of the time it was on me.”
She remembers trying to negotiate with the disturbed freshman student, eventually succeeding along with the boy’s pastor and Philippi Police Chief Jeff Walters in convincing him to surrender to authorities and let everyone go.
“I just kept asking him to let everyone leave and he and I would stay. Anything I could think of; just telling him he hadn’t gone too far,” Smith said. “I think in my mind I said it’s going to be okay, but I can’t say for sure. I just wanted him to go with us.”
Smith commended her class for their bravery, and said the way she saw it, it was her duty to protect her students while they were under her care.
“I’m in charge of them when they’re on my watch. I hope when my kids went to school people felt that way too,” she said. “When they walk in here, we’re protective. We’re supposed to teach them and take care of them.”
The freshman student now faces 30 charges in the incident and is currently at a juvenile detention facility.