Matthew Stommes had just walked his 12-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son across the street to a back-to-school mass at Annunciation Church. Stommes recalled sitting in a back pew when gunfire shattered windows around them.

“We were praising the Lord and giving him all the glory, listening to the readings, and we didn't know what was going on for those first few seconds that seemed like minutes,” he said.

He recalled seeing flashes and children screamed in panic and covered their ears.

“We could see the leaders in the church from the front starting to tell everyone to get down. But those leaders in the church here, our priest, our deacon, our principal, they were not ducking,” he said.

Stommes said he and his wife Molly began attending mass at Assumption twelve years ago. The couple was to the community’s dedication to service.

Amid the horror carried out Wednesday by a shooter who authorities say was “obsessed” with the idea of killing children, stories of bravery and tragedy have emerged as families share accounts online. At least five children and one adult remained hospitalized Friday. The shooting left two students dead and 20 people wounded, nearly all of them children.

Doctors and first responders in Minneapolis this week called the students and teachers at Annunciation Catholic School heroes for protecting each other and for following their active shooter training as the barrage of gunfire erupted during the first Mass of the school year.

Stommes recalled crawling toward the nearest exterior door in a desperate attempt to keep the shooter from entering the church as the gunfire continued.

“The real heroes here are the children that are protecting each other and the adults in there that stayed in that main area the whole time that were protecting the children and some of those children and adults taking bullets that otherwise would have found other children and other adults potentially,” he said.

Stommes and other parents carried injured children out of the church as EMS arrived on the scene. His own children were unscathed, but two of their friends remained hospitalized in critical condition on Friday.

Stommes said his family hasn’t yet decided when to return to mass at their church, but that he’s heartened by the outpouring of support from neighbors and community.

“If there's any good right now it's people coming together to try to support one another. A lot of bad has happened. Right now, it's good to see some of the good as well,” he said.