‘I will never get out of my head the scream’: Victims of Freeman school shooting continue to detail their trauma in court

Longtime school teacher Marty Jessett was preparing for his geometry class in September 2017 when he heard a loud noise in the hallway outside his second-floor classroom at Freeman High School.

He said it could have been a locker slamming, someone dropping a book, an explosion in the chemistry classroom – or maybe even a gunshot.

Then, “Pop, pop, pop, pop,” Jessett said.

The sounds were, in fact, gunshots, and they left student Sam Strahan dead and three teen girls wounded.

Jessett and several students, family members and others affected by the school shooting that rocked the region addressed Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price Tuesday. Caleb Sharpe, the now-20-year-old shooter, pleaded guilty last month to killing Strahan and shooting the other three students. He is scheduled to be sentenced this spring.

Jessett recalled students screaming in the hall and entering his room after the shots rang out. He had 12 to 15 students in a pile under his desk, he said.

He said he asked himself if he should secure his classroom or assist a wounded student, Gracie Jensen, screaming for help in the hall.

He said he made a split-second decision, one that he still wrestles with today, to stay in the room.

“Gracie’s screams still haunt me,” Jessett said.

But Jessett had another wounded student in his classroom. It was Emma Nees.

He applied pressure to Nees’ wounds, bandaged them with athletic tape and stayed with Nees until paramedics took over.

One of the students in Jessett’s room told the group that he thought Sharpe had a pop gun that did not fire. Jessett said it’s known now that pop gun was actually an AR-15 rifle that jammed.

Jessett told Price that he believes that most of the students and staff that provided victim impact statements since last week would be dead if the rifle had not jammed. He said Sharpe ran out of bullets just outside his classroom.

“In a matter of about 30 seconds, our lives were changed forever,” Jessett said.

But the school year went on.

“We had to return to the scene of a murder every day for the rest of the school year,” Jessett said.

He said he was just trying to make it to summer break so he could regroup. He took a job at University High School the following year.

“I realized I could not teach another year in that building,” Jessett said. “It would mean reliving that horrific day every day I went to work.”

He said the Freeman High School staff is almost entirely different since the shooting.

Jessett and others Tuesday described the physical and emotional scars that plague them to this day.

Loud noises, like fireworks, are overwhelming, many said.

Jessett, who also coached the Freeman boys basketball team, said he and his team went out to dinner at Applebee’s after a state basketball tournament win in March 2018.

A balloon popped in the restaurant’s lobby and the sound reverberated throughout the restaurant, Jessett said. About 90% of the group dove under the table.

“A simple balloon popping brought us right back to our trauma immediately,” he said.

Several people said they now develop exit strategies when in movie theaters or large crowds. One student, a Freeman freshman at the time of the shooting, said he does not feel comfortable in large settings and he doesn’t go to malls or movie theaters anymore.

Another student, a sixth-grader at the time of the shooting and a Freeman sophomore now, said when she walks from her locker to her first period class, she knows she would run into the girls bathroom and stand on a stall toilet seat if a shooter opened fire.

Meanwhile, a couple students spoke highly of Strahan.

“I had my best friend taken from me that day,” said one student, who addressed the court via Zoom and said her initials were K.C.

The student, a Freeman sophomore at the time, said Strahan had the “most goofy” personality.

Another former student wrote that she knew Strahan for about a week. She sat next to him in geometry class.

“He always made me laugh and feel welcomed,” she said.

Another student, now studying abroad, wrote that she rode the bus with Strahan, and he showed her his wood shop projects.

Several people recalled the scream and sobbing of Strahan’s mother, Ami Strahan, when she received the news outside the school that her son was killed.

“I will never get out of my head the scream that followed from Ami that just discovered the worst news a parent could ever get,” said Jason Putz, whose daughters attended Freeman schools in 2017.

Almost everyone who spoke Tuesday asked that Price impose the maximum punishment, and said Sharpe has not shown remorse.

“He was fully committed to the crimes,” said Donna Gibson, Jensen’s grandmother . “Let him be fully committed to the consequences.”