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Louise Zoller thought it was awfully quiet at the day-care center in Cape Coral, Florida. Planning to celebrate her mother's birthday that afternoon, Zoller, 33, had arrived 45 minutes earlier than usual to pick up two-year-old Hannah, with her 11-year-old, Morgan, in tow.
As mother and daughter approached the entrance, the center's director swung open the door and hurried them inside. Zoller overheard snippets of a cell phone conversation: "Yes, there's a man outside. I believe he has a gun." But the words didn't quite register.
Entering Hannah's classroom, Zoller could see her daughter and several other children huddled with their teacher, Christine Dunn, in a bathroom.
"Mommy," Hannah called out. Morgan went to her sister as Zoller asked Dunn what was going on.
"We're just taking precautions," Dunn told her calmly. "There's somebody outside." Throughout the seven-classroom day-care center, teachers had gathered the children into bathrooms for safety.
"Is it true he has a gun?" Zoller asked.
"We think so, but we're not sure," replied Dunn.
Zoller spotted a teacher and more children in another bathroom. Seeing the fear in the kids' eyes, she gave them some toys to keep them occupied. As she turned back to join Hannah and Morgan, a man walked past her. At first, she thought he was a staffer.
Then she saw the gun.
It was military green and appeared to be plastic. "It didn't look real," says Zoller, who has no experience with firearms.
"Where is [she]?" the man demanded.
"I don't know who you're talking about," Zoller replied. Still thinking the gun was fake, she tried to steer him away from the children. "Why don't you follow me, and we'll try to find her," she said.
Suddenly the intruder turned toward the bathroom where Hannah and Morgan were—and Zoller realized it was Hannah's teacher, Christine Dunn, he was hunting. In that same instant, she saw the man step into the bathroom and extend his arm. A shot rang out, followed by the sound of screaming children.
Zoller grabbed the man's arm. "Please stop," she cried. "You're scaring the children." He shoved her to the floor. As Zoller got up, she again saw the man raise his arm. Again the gun went off.
Over the gunman's outstretched arm, Zoller saw Morgan's anguished face as she cried out, "Mom!"
"Everything else became blank," Zoller recalls. "There was nothing else around, just her face."
Zoller grabbed the man's arm with both hands and pulled him into the hallway. As they fell to the ground, she knocked the gun from his hand, then grabbed it and tossed it toward the front lobby. Standing, the man thrust his arm at Zoller's chest. "Where's my gun?" he shouted.
Zoller told him it was in a reception area off the lobby, in the opposite direction from where she'd thrown it. The man fell for the trick and ran off. Zoller raced to the lobby, scooped up the pistol, and ran outside—straight into a phalanx of police officers, their weapons trained on her. "I have it, I have it," she shouted, throwing the gun to the ground.
The officers rushed into the building, where they found Dunn in the bathroom. She was dead. Her two-year-old, Allyson, was found unharmed.
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