This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
After learning about the deadly shooting at Saugus High School on Thursday morning, parents rushed to the Santa Clarita campus as fast as they could. Students said they started hearing shots as they arrived before classes began at 7:50 a.m. One mother said she got a text from her daughter while getting ready to go to work. “My daughter Sara told me, ‘Mom, I’m so scared. I love you guys so much. Please come, please come,'” she said. “And that just killed me.” She said that’s when she got in her car, then drove and parked near the campus. “I ran to the school, and I waited and waited,” the mother said.” “She was the first one to get out.” Another mother held her daughter Riley as she spoke about the other students still in classrooms nearly two hours after news of the shooting surfaced. “They’re texting us that they’re hiding in closets, they’re scared to die,” she said. Mercedes, whose 16-year-old son attends the high school, said he would have been in the quad where she believes the shooting broke out. He just happened to have a meeting with his coach and teammates on Thursday morning. He was frantic and crying when he called her at 7:30 a.m. She told him to stay inside a room with his team. As she spoke to KTLA at around 9:30 a.m., her son called again so they could meet up. “Don’t move please, you just need to be in my arms right now, OK?” Mercedes told him. She said she recently lost her husband, and that “for this to happen, it’s very traumatic.” Adam, a junior at Saugus High School, was also with his mom shortly after the incident. “I heard a bunch of sirens,” his mother told KTLA. “He called me, I said, ‘Come right home.'” She said she felt bad for the parents who had not yet heard from their children, and that she was lucky. She also received a call from her daughter, who attends Arroyo Seco Junior High. That campus was also placed on lockdown. “She’s scared. She’s 13. She doesn’t know what’s going on,” the mother said. She said she’s glad that her kids learned what they needed to do from lockdown drills. “It’s really sad that they have to do that, but it does prepare them,” she said. Authorities received a 911 call about the shooting at 7:30 a.m., according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Investigators said a 16-year-old student opened fire at a quad and struck five other students before turning the gun on himself. All six of them were taken the hospital, where two of the students have died, the Sheriff’s Department said. The suspected shooter was in grave condition.