Middle school students, many paired with younger classmates through a school “buddy system,” jumped into action as the shooter fired indiscriminately through the church. Older children protected the younger ones, laying on top of them or guiding them under the pews, while teachers ushered students to safety.

”The first action by those middle schoolers was to push their buddies down under the pew. Which is why the middle schoolers were the ones that were standing the longest and were largely the injured, acting in heroism … and then covering the little ones under the pews,”  Michael Burt told NPR.

Burt, who has five children at Annunciation Catholic School, said his kids were friends with the two students fatally shot, 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski.

One kid’s heroic move

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