'A Real Angry Kid,' Wounded Teacher Talks to 'Nightline'

— -- Below is a transcript of an interview with David Kachadourian, one of the teachers shot Wednesday by student Asa H. Coon at SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland. Four people were shot before Coon killed himself.

Kachadourian was interviewed on ABC's "Nightline" by correspondent Martin Bashir.

BASHIR: And I'm joined by David Kachadourian, one of the teachers at the school who was shot by the gunman.Mr. Kachadourian, good evening, at the end of probably the most traumatic day of your life.

KACHADOURIAN: Good evening.

BASHIR: How are you feeling?

KACHADOURIAN: I'm feeling OK. I'm feeling physically fine.

BASHIR: Can you describe what happened today at the school?

KACHADOURIAN: Well, it started off as a pretty average day. It was dark and cloudy. I rode my bike into school and had my first two classes uneventfully. They were pretty good. It was a pretty good day. And it was raining outside.

And then my third class was after lunch and it was at the end of this class, almost to the end of the class, there was this loud popping noise and I wasn't sure what it was.

I didn't think a whole lot about it, but then there were people sort of running and yelling in the halls. And at that point, the kids in my room started yelling and they started running down the stairs.

A moment or two after that, a student appeared in the hallway with two guns in his hands and waving them around and something. I couldn't exactly tell what he was yelling.

BASHIR: As he came in, did you recognize him immediately as one of your students? Because you're a math teacher at the school.

KACHADOURIAN: Yes. Yes, I did, immediately.

BASHIR: So you knew the student.

KACHADOURIAN: I'm sorry?

BASHIR: You knew this young man.

KACHADOURIAN: Yes, yeah.

BASHIR: So what happened then?

KACHADOURIAN: I had him [in my] class. And then he was waving the guns around and I wasn't entirely convinced they were real. I thought they might be starter pistols or something like that.

But as the kids were going down the stairs, I went to the doorway to the stairwell and, at that point, there was another pop and I felt something in my back that felt like I would imagine a paintball to feel. It's sort of a heavy hit, pressure, but not like what you would expect a gun.

And at that point, I went into the stairwell, not thinking that I had been shot, but just thinking that I needed to get kids downstairs and safely away.

And we went down to the third floor and the hallways were pretty much cleared out. People had pretty much scattered out. There were a few students and I took the students into one of the closets -- not really a closet -- a teacher workroom.

And there was another teacher in there with a group of students and we went in there, which is the standard procedure for a security situation, because those are the places where you can go into a room that's locked.

And we waited and we heard the security people outside saying that they were looking for the shooter and they couldn't locate him and we just kept quiet for what seemed like a long time, although it's impossible to tell what time was like when you're in that kind of situation.

After a while, it seemed like there were just security people outside and it seemed pretty safe and the other teacher stuck her head out and said, "We have someone in here who's been shot." And the security people came in, EMS people came in, and they started to work on me.

And at that point, they told us that a couple other people had been shot and the kids started to cry and I started to cry and they told us that the person who was doing the shooting had been killed, but they didn't say how, whether it was by himself or by someone else.

And then they took me out of the building on a stretcher and into an ambulance and to the hospital.

BASHIR: When you were in that closet with the students, were you still unaware that you, in fact, had been shot?

KACHADOURIAN: Well, I wasn't certain. It hurt a lot, but I felt like it could have easily just been a bruise. It started to feel a little bit wet on my back and that made me think that maybe I was bleeding.

BASHIR: Now, police have suggested that the gunman himself intentionally targeted you and others that he shot today. Do you believe that?

KACHADOURIAN: I really don't know. I don't know. I would guess not, but I don't know. That's just an impression.

BASHIR: When you say an impression...KACHADOURIAN: It didn't seem like it.

BASHIR: But did you know much about this student itself? I mean, you'd been teaching him since the start of this semester. Is that correct?

KACHADOURIAN: Right.

BASHIR: Did you...

KACHADOURIAN: I had him since the start of the school year. So that's been about a month and a half. So not a real long time. And the class is real large, so it's hard to know students individually very well or interact with them very much one-on-one.

BASHIR: Did he behave in any way that suggested he was angry or that he might have a problem, a serious problem?

KACHADOURIAN: He did behave in a way that suggested he was angry, yes. He seemed like a real angry kid.

BASHIR: Did you have any involvement in this young student's suspension on Monday?

KACHADOURIAN: No. I didn't know anything about it.

BASHIR: Now, you probably know that this student killed himself.

KACHADOURIAN: Yes.

BASHIR: Presumably, notwithstanding what he did. That must be a great sadness, also.

KACHADOURIAN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really sad. It's really, really sad to think that he had so much pain and so much anger that he just felt like he could do nothing else.

There's a lot of pain in the world. There's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of suffering by kids and a lot of it is invisible or barely visible and it's really -- as a teacher, it's really scary to think about how much pain there is out there that we don't know about.

BASHIR: When you say it's scary, what do you mean?

KACHADOURIAN: I mean, it's scary to think about kids who are carrying so much pain around and what they have to live with and what they have to endure and you worry about them a lot.

BASHIR: As you looked into this young man's eyes, as he held these two guns at you, what did you see?

KACHADOURIAN: Oh, wow. I think that, you know, it was really unreal. It was like almost play acting. You know, I wasn't entirely convinced that they were real guns and I wasn't entirely convinced that he was serious. I..

.

BASHIR: Looking back...

KACHADOURIAN: I…

BASHIR: Sorry, go ahead.

KACHADOURIAN: Yes. I'm sorry. I'm done.

BASHIR: Just one other question. There's no metal detector at the entrance to this school and we understand that parents have been campaigning for additional security for some time.

Does it suggest that security hasn't really be a high enough priority?

KACHADOURIAN: I would say that this kind of situation is so out of the normal, so totally unexpected and unexpectable, that it's not something that anybody would have foreseen.

BASHIR: OK, well, David Kachadourian, thank you so much for joining us and we wish you well with your recovery.

KACHADOURIAN: Thank you very much.