It’s the type of situation that is every parent’s worst nightmare: your child calling from school in the midst of a violent attack. Sadly, school shootings are a far too common reality in this country, as the parents of the slain Kentucky student Bailey Holt know all too well. Holt, 15 was one of the two students killed at the Marshall County High School shooting in Benton on Tuesday. Eighteen others were injured.
In the teen’s final moments, she called her parents. “She called me and all I could hear was voices, chaos in the background,” said Bailey’s mother, Secret Holt, to ABC affiliate WKRN. “She couldn’t say anything and I tried to call her name over and over and over and she never responded.”
Secret Holt feared for the worst when she didn’t see Bailey, a sophomore, on any of the buses transporting survivors to a nearby school. “We waited and waited for her to get off the buses and she never did,” she said. “The principal at North Marshall came and got me and took us outside and we got a cop car and they took us to the fire department and told us what had happened.”
According to her mom, Bailey had set her sights on a career in medicine. “Even though she was 15, she had already decided her career was going to be a labor and delivery nurse,” Secret Holt told WKRN. “She helped others… She was just so kind-hearted and the most amazing kid anybody could ever ask for. Her smile could light up the room.”
