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Strongsville native mother and son describe being in the middle of Florida school shooting scene

"This is just happening way too often, and our children are suffering."

As cliche as it sounds, it was an ordinary Wednesday for Kelly Kiernan in Parkland, Florida.

Kelly happened to be in the car coming back from lunch with her husband, David, and a couple friends.

They were seconds from her son Liam's school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

"The cop cars were just flying by, flying by. All of a sudden it was undercover police cars and that’s when my heart sank. Please don't be the high school. Call it mother's intuition," Kiernan told Channel 3 News.

Instinctively, Liam’s parents followed the entourage of flashing lights. They ended up being part of the handful of parents who happened to show up at Douglas High School as paramedics raced in.

It took seconds for the sick reality to sink in, with the first student Kelly saw.

"A paramedic had her shirt up and I could see the wound in her back. She was clearly shot,” Kiernan says.

Then came the text from her own son. Liam was inside the school confirming there had indeed been a shooting.

“He was telling me, I'm scared mom, and I love you, and I'm really scared,” Kiernan says, clearly still shaken up at the thought of it.

Liam Kiernan adds, "And I'm texting everyone who I knew, I love you, because I didn't know if I was going to see them again”.

Liam says at first they thought it was a fire alarm, then they heard 4 shots. He scrambled with about 50 other students to the back of what he says was a dark, cramped and quiet band room.

"And we're sitting there, just hoping to God that we will have some way out of this, and we will make it through. We are hearing rumors that kids are dying and we knew that 3 kids had died at that point. We heard gunshots from outside of the classroom. We heard police screaming," Liam recalls from just hours earlier when he adds, “It's like, oh my God. This is happening right now. This is not a drill. This is real life".

Liam did eventually make it out to his mom. Kelly then goes into auto pilot, trying to be the mother for as many kids as possible.

"So I sat down next to this boy and I said are you ok honey?" Kelly breaks down and we can feel her heartache in her voice as she continues.

"He said I saw my best friend die. His brains went everywhere," Kelly says with the pain of a parent who just witnessed the unthinkable.

Another student told her, “I walked over 3 dead bodies, but when we walk out, we have to walk out with our arms out on the student in front of us so we can't look down, but I had to step over their legs".

Still surreal to Kelly, she candidly admits, “Your brain just can’t comprehend all this! This couldn't be happening at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. There’s no way. But it was."

Kelly ends her interview from Florida with what every parent must have been thinking today: "If I can say so, change has to be made. Mental illness in our children is so bad right now, and somebody needs to do something. This is just happening way too often, and our children are suffering."

Kelly Kiernan is from Strongsville and the Kiernans still live here in Northeast Ohio for part of the year.

Their local connection extends right to Kelly’s best friend from Strongsville High School who did that difficult online interview back here at Channel 3.

Denise Polverine, WKYC’s Director of Digital Content and Strategy, but also a mom.

And we saw it’s not easy for her either.

Friend to friend.

Mom to mom.

It’s real. It’s raw. And hard to even grasp.

Liam did come home, but our thoughts keep going back to the 17 families who can't say the same thing.

Watch the entire interview with Kelly and Liam Kiernan in the player below:

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