In some of 17-year-old Justin Shilling’s final moments, he was hiding in a bathroom with another student, Keegan Gregory, who was texting his family group chat in real time as everything played out.
“IM [sic] HIDING IN THE BATHROOM, OMG, HELP, MOM,” read a series of messages. “He killed him, OMFG” read the next two.
Then for four excruciating minutes, nothing.
“He wasn’t responding, and I started screaming hysterically,” Meghan Gregory, Keegan’s mother, told CNN.
Finally, a text came through.
“I JUST WATCHED HIM KILL SOMEONE,” AND “HE PUT ME UP AGAINST THE WALL” before he texted that he ran and, likely as a result, survived.
“The day he came home, he sat with us and he said, ‘I shouldn’t have left him,’” Gregory said, recalling what her son told her about Justin Shilling, who was killed in the same bathroom where Keegan was hiding.
“There’s nothing he could’ve done for Justin, but he feels this guilt because they were in it together,” she said.
Keegan was 15 at the time of the shooting and for years has gone to therapy to try and process what happened. He’s now moved away from the area to a different school.
“He couldn’t go back into Oxford. He tried. But it was too much for him,” his mother said.
While CNN sat with his mother, Keegan was working on his victim impact statement, something he initially wanted nothing to do with, his mother said. Now, “he feels it’s important that he gets up there.”
“He’s a completely different person” than he used to be, she said. “Having that innocence ripped from him changed him. He doesn’t get the childhood that most kids get.”
