'I never stopped running': What happened inside Mount Horeb Middle School when a student showed up with a gun

It was shortly after 11 a.m. Wednesday when roughly 200 eighth-grade students and staff filed into the cafeteria at Mount Horeb Middle School.

Within 15 minutes, sandwiches were left half-eaten and trays of food remained untouched.

The panic hit the cafeteria quickly. Eighth-grader Henry Loger, 14, stopped eating when he heard a friend saying, “What is Damian doing? He has a gun.” When Loger looked up, he saw his classmate, Damian Haglund, approaching the cafeteria's front window.

Loger said when Haglund reached the window, he started “slamming the butt of a rifle against the glass.” The glass didn't break.

Loger said he didn't make eye contact with his classmate. He just remembers Haglund "staring ahead."

“My heart sank,” Loger told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It was insane. At first, it didn't register in my mind that it was a gun. It was so big.”

The Wisconsin Department of Justice said in a statement Saturday that Haglund had brought a Ruger .177 caliber pellet rifle to the school. It is unclear how much time passed between Haglund hitting the rifle against the window and the arrival of officers with the Mount Horeb police department.

At approximately 11:11 a.m., a citizen called 911 after witnessing a subject moving toward Mount Horeb Middle School with a backpack and what appeared to be a long gun. Mount Horeb Police Department officers responded to the school where they located a subject who matched the description in the area of the middle school, east of the main entrance at 900 Garfield Street.

When officers arrived, Haglund pointed the pellet rifle at them and did not comply with the officers’ commands to drop the weapon. Officers shot and killed him, according to the DOJ. The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave, per agency policy. The number of officers involved and whether Haglund first fired shots at the officers is information that has yet to be released.

Students screaming and then running

Ana Kolb, 14, never saw Haglund. She sits at a lunch table farthest from the front window. She remembers hearing other students screaming. Following the lead of others, Kolb started running down a hallway, past the gym and the band room.

“There’s a shooter. You need to run,” Kolb shouted at students practicing their instruments in the hallway.

She continued running past the basketball courts and down a hill. It was then she heard the sound.

“I heard gunshots but I never looked back," Kolb said. "I never stopped running."

She and dozens of others ran about a quarter mile until they reached Children's Community School, a Montessori preschool, located on Springdale Street.

“There is a school shooter. Open the gate, let us inside," Kolb shouted at the teachers outside with the preschoolers.

They did, and Kolb remembers many of her friends scooping up the small children and running with them inside.

Once inside, between 40 and 50 eighth graders piled inside a closet, "packed in tight." The closet didn't have windows and the students took turns barricading the door, which did not have a lock. Kolb said the students were sobbing, hugging each other and she remembers someone saying a prayer.

Then they all started calling their parents.

“There is a school shooter," she told her mom, Heather Zingg, over the phone. "I don’t know what to do.”

It was then, when she said the words out loud, that she started to cry.

“I couldn’t calm down," Kolb said. "I think I was having a panic attack.”

The house with the red roof

Loger took the same hallway as Kolb to exit the school. Before leaving the building, he made sure all his friends were out of the cafeteria and checked the bathrooms in the hallway to make sure they were empty.

Once outside, he "locked in" on a house with a red roof on Lincoln Street. On his way there, Loger saw two sixth-grade girls on rollerblades and helped them make their way to the house, too.

Robin Wasikowski was on the phone when she heard her doorbell start ringing, and thought it was a delivery driver.

Her doorbell kept ringing as she rushed to answer it. Two girls on rollerblades at her door told her somebody had a gun and there was a shooting.

"These two girls couldn't even stand up on their own, they were so scared," Wasikowski said. "I was just dragging them into my house."

Loger and a substitute band teacher also rushed inside her house. She closed her blinds, locked her doors and made sure the children immediately called their parents.

“I had no clue who she was," Loger said of Wasikowski. "I just needed somewhere to hide."

Wasikowski's 9-year-old daughter was outside at gym class at the time, but was able to get inside with her classmates. An officer gave her a phone so she could let Wasikowski know that she was okay.

"I guess the kids are pretty traumatized," Wasikowski said. "They were rocking back and forth saying they're too young to die."

She's also been haunted by the tragedy.

"I'm having a hard time sleeping," she said. "I just can't get those screams out of my head."

"My daughter bought flowers for Damian. We put them by the tree," she said. "It's haunting. To just look out my front door, and there it was."

Referendums paid for security measures

At a press conference Wednesday, Superintendent Steve Salerno said lives may have been saved thanks to safety features at the middle school.

Voters approved referendums in 2017 and 2022 that he said enabled the district to install vestibules, security cameras, locked doors and a doorbell camera system. He declined to comment on how many of the school windows are shatterproof or bulletproof. However, Loger said the glass remained intact when Haglund repeatedly slammed it with the butt of the pellet rifle.

“Had it not been for our community stepping up to the plate to help support capital and operational referendums ... this could have been a far worse tragedy," Salerno said Wednesday.

'A master class in resiliency'

The investigation into last week's incident is ongoing, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

Salerno told the Journal Sentinel on Monday that he was on the grounds of the middle school, high school and intermediate school to offer words of encouragement and strength as students returned to class for the first time since the incident.

Loger and Kolby were among the students who returned to class.

"These students are demonstrating a master class in resiliency," Salerno said.

The student whose life was lost Wednesday was also on Salerno's mind.

"There is still a great deal of reflection and love being sent to the family of our lost little boy," Salerno said. "This one act is not emblematic of who he was or his family. We only want the very best for his family as they mourn his loss."

Kolb was in the same homeroom as Haglund. She was also in a writing class with him. Every Friday, the students would pick three people to read their stories. She said they always picked Haglund.

“He was funny,” she said. “His stories were entertaining.”

Loger said he didn’t know Haglund well, but looking back realizes there may have been warning signs.

“He’d make jokes about school shootings. I just thought he was an off kid, with a dark sense of humor. I never thought he’d be capable of doing something like that.”

Rory Linnane of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What happened in Mount Horeb school when student showed up with a gun