UVALDE, Texas — On Tuesday morning, with two days left until the end of the year, fourth grade Robb Elementary teacher Nicole Ogburn was tending to her students in Room 102 when she heard loud bangs outside.
"I just stood up and looked out my window that was right here close by, and I was like, 'There's a guy with a gun. Oh my God, get down!'"
At that point, she jumped into action, moving quickly to make sure every child was lying on the ground. According to timeline provided by authorities, it's believed the 18-year-old shooter was on the scene for an hour before he was killed by a Border Patrol agent.
"I just heard gunfire," she said. "I heard it and I kept hearing it, then it would stop for a minute. Then it would go back on, then all of a sudden it stopped."
Ogburn, herself a Uvalde native, provided a firsthand account of the tense moments when the gunman arrived at the school and fired shots into her classroom before entering the building. He would eventually kill 19 students and two teachers, just three doors down from where Ogburn and her class was.
No one in her room was hurt.
When law enforcement came to the shattered window, Ogburn says, children started jumping out before running to a nearby funeral home to safety. Meanwhile, Ogburn immediately began calling parents to let them know their kids were safe.
She said the chaos of the situation made it feel "like an eternity," but believes law enforcement "did what they needed to do."
"I want the blame to stop," she told KENS 5 on Friday afternoon. "The only person here to blame is that person who came into my school and hurt my friends and the students who I saw every day and I loved."
Local families are calling her a hero for doing all she could to prevent that hurt from reaching their loved ones. Ogburn says she only did was she was expected to do in an unimaginable situation.
"I'm not a hero," she said. "I was their teacher and I loved them very, very much. I will continue to love on them as much as they need."
Tony Pineda's daughter, Trish, is Ogburn's co-teacher. He says Trish saw the shooter go past their classroom.
"She texted her husband and told him, 'There's a shooter. We need help. I love you,'" Pineda recounted.
He says Trish helped the first group of students out the window while her husband, a Border Patrol agent, was on the other side. He was getting a haircut when he received word of the shooting.
"Her knees were all scraped up trying to get out of there," Pineda said of his daughter's escape.
The father said it's been hard for his family to eat and sleep knowing so many people they knew are no longer with them.
"She said, 'My best friend died,'" Pineda said. "Then later she said, 'My other best friend died.' You can't recuperate from everything overnight, or even (over) years. It's a lifetime. I just hope my grandkids get over it and live their lives."
He went on to say Trish has considered the possibility of leaving the profession "if they don't have the protection."