Antoinette Tuff Describes How She Talked the Ga. School Gunman Into Surrendering

Atlanta school shooting averted; clerk Antoinette Tuff describes confrontation

By Max Ehrenfreund, Published: August 21

Shots were fired Tuesday at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, an elementary school outside of Atlanta. Police took Michael Brandon Hill, 20, into custody and said later that he was carrying an AK-47 rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition, the Associated Press reported.

Fortunately, no one was injured. The outcome seems largely due to Antoinette Tuff, a school clerk, who told ABC affiliate WSB-TV that she met the gunman when he entered the building.

“He had a look on him that he was willing to kill,” Tuff said. “He said he didn’t have any reason to live, and he knew he was going to die today.” Tuff said she began telling him the story of her own life in order to calm him down. She described how her separation from her husband after 33 years of marriage left her feeling lonely and in pain, but she encouraged the man not to succumb to despair.

She said she prayed for the gunman during the crisis, and credited God with helping her maintain her composure.

“I give it all to God. I’m not the hero. I was terrified,” she said.

At one point, the man exchanged gunfire with police. Tuff said she convinced the man to stand down so that he would not be killed.

“I just explained to him that I loved him,” she said. “I didn’t know his name, I didn’t know much about him, but I did love him.”

Eventually, Tuff persuaded the man to surrender to police.

“It was scary because I knew that at the moment, he was ready to take my life along with his, and that if I didn’t say the right thing then we all would be dead,” she told ABC.

Hill has been charged with assault against an officer, making threats, and illegally possessing a firearm.

LISTEN: Full, Gripping 911 Call From Georgia School Shooting

by Matt Wilstein | 9:44 pm, August 21st, 2013

The full 911 call from the narrowly averted school shooting in Georgia yesterday has been released and tonight on CNN, Anderson Cooper played an extended excerpt from it for his audience. In the video below, you can hear school bookkeeperAntoinette Tuff calmly relay messages from the 20-year-old shooter Michael Brandon Hill, while she slowly helps talk him out of killing students.

On the 911 call, Tuff can be heard telling to operator to keep the police out of the school or else Hill will begin shooting. At one point, she says he’s gone outside and started shooting. She considers running to a safe place, but apparently does not have time before he returns.

Hill instructs Tuff to put the 911 operator on hold and “call the news.” When she returns to the 911 operator, Huff says, “he doesn’t want the kids, he wants the police so back off” and “he said he don’t care if he die and he don’t have nothing to live for, and he said he’s not mentally stable.”

Later, Tuff calls one of Hill’s relatives, asking him if it’s OK to “tell her to let her come” to the school. “She sound like she loves you a lot,” she tells Hill. Eventually, Tuff asks the operator, “If I walk out there with him, they won’t shoot him or anything like that? He wants to give himself up. Is that okay? They won’t shoot him?”

When she finally get him to surrender, Tuff tells Hill, “We not going to hate you, baby. It’s a good thing that you giving up, so we’re not going to hate you.” She tells Hill she’s “proud” of him and that he shouldn’t worry. “We all go through something in life,” Tuff says.