Brayan Maldonado, also 17, said it sounded like someone had been pushed up against a locker.
"My teacher, Coach Aspinwall, he opened the door, and he ran outside to see what’s going on," Reyna told ABC News.
“We heard some popping sounds," Reyna said. "We just stopped, we froze, we didn’t know what was going on. ... So we all ran to the back of the classroom. We hid in the corner."
Reyna said she and her 17 classmates were lying on the ground for several minutes when they heard more popping sounds.
"That’s when we realized that our classroom door was still open," Reyna said.
Once the door was secured, Reyna and Maldonado said they tried to console their classmates.
"Some were hyperventilating, some were crying," Maldonado said. "I was really trying to calm everyone down. Once everyone was calm, I got calm and all the feelings kicked in."
Reyna said first responders evacuated the students to another classroom before they joined the rest of the school at the football field.
Aspinwall, fellow teacher Christina Irimie, and two students were killed in Wednesday morning's shooting in Winder. Nine others were injured.
The 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, a student at the school, surrendered at the scene to the school resource officers and was taken into custody, authorities said.
Gray is charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said. A motive is not known.
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.