On the Monday morning when the shootings took place, Benjamin Strong was at the breakfast table, munching on Froot Loops and listening to his father, a preacher, read from the book of Proverbs. In his heart, however, the 17-year-old was pondering the words of a classmate. "Don't be at prayer circle on Monday," Michael Carneal had told Strong on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Carneal was a bit of a misfit at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., one who occasionally wore ill-fitting, loud-colored clothes and had a couple of disciplinary problems (browsing the Playboy Website, digging a sharp object into a wall). But Carneal could also discuss the Shakespeare play assigned to class (Romeo and Juliet) with allusions to other works by the Bard. Strong was a senior and Carneal a freshman, and, says Strong, "We're in distinctly different social classes," with Carneal the son of a prominent lawyer. But they were friends, and both played in the brass section of the band. "He just interested me," Strong told TIME. "He seemed to be real."
And so Ben Strong took his friend's words seriously. "I imagined everything from water guns to real guns," he says. "I did play that over in my head. I thought he'd wave it around, at worst." Strong hoped his friend was just being sarcastic. He had joked back at the time, saying he would "take him" if anything bad happened. Carneal often hung about with other students in the school lobby, looking on as the prayer circle met, never joining in. And so whatever he imagined, Strong believed there "would be time to negotiate or something." Besides, Strong could not stay away from the prayer circle. He was leading it.
On the morning of the shootings, school principal Bill Bond was on the phone when he heard three loud pops followed by a pause. "Then it changed," he recalls. Seven shots came out in perfect rhythm before another pause intervened. Recognizing the sound of semiautomatic gunfire, Bond jumped from his desk. He could hear crying and moaning. Dashing into the lobby, he saw bodies and blood on the ground--and by the cream-colored walls, a .22 Ruger on the floor and two students face to face. Bond kicked the gun away.
Minutes before, at the prayer circle, Strong had seen Carneal enter the lobby, and in his prayer he asked God for strength to last through the day. As the amen was said, the 35 members of the circle squeezed hands--and then came the first shot. "I thought it was probably Mike," says Strong. He turned his eyes on his friend and forcefully said, "Put down the gun." But Carneal continued to fire from the 11-round clip. Strong again spoke the words, receiving only a momentary glance from Carneal. But while other students ran for cover, Strong stood his ground. "What are you doing? Don't shoot. Just put the gun down." When Carneal paused for the second time, Strong took advantage of the silence. "As soon as he paused, I went for him." He rushed up to his friend and pushed him against the wall. The gun fell to their feet. "I didn't know what to do next," he says, "so I stayed right next to Michael." His friend's hands were shaking, and an earplug fell from his ear. Then Carneal looked into Strong's eyes and said in a cracking voice, "Kill me, please. I can't believe I did that."