length of time, with a number of showings, given the climate and activity in our market, that no one else had that type of or level of force in response. roy, i m glad you re here and you re healthy now. but you had to be worried that, you know, it wouldn t be the case while this was all happening. oh, yeah. i was worried. i was very worried, initially, when it all started. and not knowing that the officers were out there until i saw two officers outside the window on the side of the home after he told me there were cops outside. we came upstairs, where eric and i were, and once i saw the officers with their guns drawn, and i saw them doing hand signals, signaling each other to
there s cops outside, to come outside with your hands up. so that was kind of like zero to 100, so that s pretty much what i felt was just like confusion and shock and fear for the most part because i had no idea why they were all down there at that time. yeah. roy, i understand you made sure that you put samuel behind you just in case something happened, that it would happen to you instead of him. what do you want to say to the neighbor who called the police? well, to that particular neighbor and any potential neighbor, my message would be, you know, we re just like you. we occupy the same space. we do the same things. we go to the same places. you know, if you see a crime,
well, in the beginning, when we were upstairs is when most of the, i would say, like, shock and initial fear, kind of, happened. because it went from there s cops outside, to come outside with your hands up. so, that was kind of just, like, from zero to 100. so, that s pretty much what i felt was just, like, confusion and shock and fear, for the most part, because i had no idea why they were all down there, at that time. yeah. well, i understand you made sure that you put samuel behind you. so, just in case something happened, that it could happen it would happen to you, instead of him. what do you want to say to the neighbor who called the police? well, to that particular neighbor and any, potential neighbor, my message would be,
we all got worried. everyone hopped on their phones. we were texting our parents. several kids were getting phone calls that there s cops outside, something is going on at the school, something is wrong, but stay where you are. just stay put and treat it as if it is real. so that s what we did. how much time went by between the time that you heard the first, you didn t know at the time, shot and then when you knew this was the real deal? how much time was that? because it seemed insane that it took that long. but how much time? i would say only about 30 minutes. 30 minutes? that s a lot of time. in my class, we re a pretty small group of students taking a pretty hard advanced placement class. we didn t want to panic. we wanted to figure out what was going on.
we got escorted to my mom s house. we had cops outside. the police escorted us back there and said it was safe to go in. they overlooked him in the attic. i was downstairs, along with the rest of my family that was there for my grandma s funeral. he then waited for his moment. he shot my mom in the neck through the attic vent. my mom was rushed to the hospital. he missed by just this much. they couldn t operate, take the bullet out because it was so close to her spine. till this day the bullet is still in her neck, three years later. and after he did that, he turned the gun on himself. david ratliff sr. began his spree of violence shortly after his release from the same jail in which his son is now incarcerated. he had served 119 days for