In her last moments, Helena Ramsay saved a friend’s life during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Doudlas High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14.
The 17-year-old Helena crouched by a bookshelf with Samantha Grady in the classroom where they were taking a class about the Holocaust. When the gunman reached their classroom, he shot through the glass and entered the room. Helena told Samatha to use the books to shield herself.
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“‘Grab a book. Grab a book.’ It was a tiny book, but I took it and held it up,” Samantha recalled in an interview with the Today Show last week.
Samantha said she was struck by some gunfire, but managed to escape. She saw two other people shot during her escape.
“The book kind of deterred some of the bullets so they didn’t hit me so badly,” Samantha said. But Helena, her best friend, “didn’t make it.”
“She was the one who gave me the idea. She helped me a lot,” Samantha said.
Samantha called her parents after she hid behind a truck outside.
“I made sure I was calm because I didn’t want them to go crazy,” Samantha told Today. “My dad was really worried. It was etched all over his face. My mom, she was bawling. As you can imagine, it was pretty scary for both of them.”
According to the Miami Herald, Helena and her parents moved to the U.S. from England when she was two years old. She was a loving person, who took in two stray cats. She also loved music, and was a fan of K-Pop groups.
“She was a really good person through and through. She was just great,” Katherine Dadd, who knew Helena since preschool, told the Herald. “One of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”
“She was so funny, her sense of humor was really crazy. We would go back and forth and I’d banter with her,” classmate Kyrah Simon added.
Her other friends said they were not surprised Helena spent her last moments trying to save another person’s life.
“I wasn’t surprised because she was always looking out for other people,” classmate Carli Albert told the Herald. “If I were to complain that I was tired, she said ‘We are going to make today a good day.’”
Helena’s family held a vigil Saturday, with about 200 people remembering Helena. Her funeral will take place later this week.
“Helena was a smart, kind hearted, and thoughtful person,” a relative, Curtis Page Jr., wrote on Facebook. “The was deeply loved and loved others even more so. Though she was some what reserved, she had a relentless motivation towards her academic studies, and her soft warm demeanor brought the best out in all who knew her. She was so brilliant and witty, and I’m still wrestling with the idea that she is actually gone. She would have started college next year.”
Confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and was ordered held without bond.
Photo credit: Facebook/ Curtis Page Jr.
