Meet The Woman Who Put Her Life On The Line To Stop A Mass School Shooting

Nobody was injured or killed when a 20-year-old with an AK-47 walked into a Georgia elementary school yesterday and began open firing.

This was because the gunman was persuaded to surrender to police by Antoinette Tuff, a school clerk who spent roughly an hour calming Michael Brandon Hill down and telling him to put down his gun.

“I saw a young man ready to kill anybody that he could,” she told local news outlet WSBTV-2.
Due to the location of her office, Tuff was the first person in the school to make contact with Hill.

“The clips that go into the gun… he sat there right in front of me in the office and began to load them with bullets,” she said.
After she saw the weapon, Tuff immediately began attempting to reason with the gunman.

Hill told Tuff that he had nothing to live for, which triggered her to share inspiring stories from her own life to let him know that he wasn’t alone in his struggles.

“I just started praying for him. I just started talking to him and allowing him to know some of the stories and let him know what was going on with me and that it would be OK. And then let him know that he could just give himself up,” Tuff said.

Tuff told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she told Hill about a particular tragedy she recently experienced, reminding him that “life will still bring about turns, but we can learn from it.”

“You don’t have to die today,” Tuff said to Hill. Her words inspired Hill to put down his weapon and then ask the clerk to apologize to the school for him via the intercom. “I give it all to God, I’m not the hero. I was terrified,” Tuff added.

Tuff said she gained the courage to talk down the gunman from her faith in God and a recent speech from her pastor about “anchoring in the lord.”