Mom of 15-Year-Old Killed in Kentucky School Shooting Mourns Daughter as ‘Sweet Soul’
January 25, 2018A mother whose 15-year-old was one of two students killed during the Kentucky high school shooting is mourning her daughter as “a perfect sweet soul.”
Bailey Nicole Holt, 15, died at the scene of the shooting Tuesday morning at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky. A second student, 15-year-old Preston Ryan Cope, died at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville from injuries he sustained in the attack by a classmate who authorities have not named.
Seventeen other students were injured, 15 of them with gunshots wounds.
Holt’s mother, Secret Holt, says the attack that claimed her daughter was “just unbearable” for the girl’s family, she told TV station KFVS.
She called it a “horrific act of violence,” and gave thanks for “all the prayers” directed toward the family.
Preston Ryan Cope
Marshall County High School
Friends of the victims took to social media to remember those whose lives were taken.
“Today on 1-23-18 we lost two of the greatest people I have ever met all because one kid was ‘hurting inside,'” Gabbi Bayers wrote on Facebook, recalling “one of the saddest and scariest days of my life” and thanking others “for stopping me from going back into the high school to find my brother and friends.”
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“Bailey Holt and Preston Cope were two great people, I have never heard one negative thing come from their mouths,” she wrote. “I’m glad we made the memories we did with each other. It hurts knowing we won’t be able to share the laughs anymore.”
“I honestly dont care what this boy was going through, he could have talked to someone. Instead he CHOSE to bring a gun to school, he CHOSE to shoot innocent people, and he CHOSE to not care. I have no sympathy. I can’t stop thinking about the two we lost, I love y’all.”
“To everyone else, I’m glad y’all made it out okay.”
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Tim Weatherbee celebrated Cope as a young athlete, writing on Facebook that Cope and other boys “spent many years together learning the game of baseball and building a friendship, a brotherhood. Preston Cope was a part of that brotherhood.” He tagged his post #sluggersforever.
The suspect is a 15-year-old male student who allegedly entered the school just before 8 a.m. with a handgun and began firing, authorities said at a press conference.
He has been formally charged with two counts of murder and 12 counts of first degree assault, Marshall County Assistant Attorney Jason Darnall told reporters. The Assistant Attorney plans to try the teen as an adult.