WHEN THE SILENCE FELL

By JULIE GRACE/WEST PADUCAH

On the Monday morning when the shootings took place, Benjamin Strong was at the breakfast table, munching on Froot Loops and listening to his father, a preacher, read from the book of Proverbs. In his heart, however, the 17-year-old was pondering the words of a classmate. "Don't be at prayer circle on Monday," Michael Carneal had told Strong on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Carneal was a bit of a misfit at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., one who occasionally wore ill-fitting, loud-colored clothes and had a couple of disciplinary problems (browsing the Playboy Website, digging a sharp object into a wall). But Carneal could also discuss the Shakespeare play assigned to class (Romeo and Juliet) with allusions to other works by the Bard. Strong was a senior and Carneal a freshman, and, says Strong, "We're in distinctly different social classes," with Carneal the son of a prominent lawyer. But they were friends, and both played in the brass section of the band. "He just interested me," Strong told TIME. "He seemed to be real."

And so Ben Strong took his friend's words seriously. "I imagined everything from water guns to real guns," he says. "I did play that over in my head. I thought he'd wave it around, at worst." Strong hoped his friend was just being sarcastic. He had joked back at the time, saying he would "take him" if anything bad happened. Carneal often hung about with other students in the school lobby, looking on as the prayer circle met, never joining in. And so whatever he imagined, Strong believed there "would be time to negotiate or something." Besides, Strong could not stay away from the prayer circle. He was leading it.

On the morning of the shootings, school principal Bill Bond was on the phone when he heard three loud pops followed by a pause. "Then it changed," he recalls. Seven shots came out in perfect rhythm before another pause intervened. Recognizing the sound of semiautomatic gunfire, Bond jumped from his desk. He could hear crying and moaning. Dashing into the lobby, he saw bodies and blood on the ground--and by the cream-colored walls, a .22 Ruger on the floor and two students face to face. Bond kicked the gun away.

Minutes before, at the prayer circle, Strong had seen Carneal enter the lobby, and in his prayer he asked God for strength to last through the day. As the amen was said, the 35 members of the circle squeezed hands--and then came the first shot. "I thought it was probably Mike," says Strong. He turned his eyes on his friend and forcefully said, "Put down the gun." But Carneal continued to fire from the 11-round clip. Strong again spoke the words, receiving only a momentary glance from Carneal. But while other students ran for cover, Strong stood his ground. "What are you doing? Don't shoot. Just put the gun down." When Carneal paused for the second time, Strong took advantage of the silence. "As soon as he paused, I went for him." He rushed up to his friend and pushed him against the wall. The gun fell to their feet. "I didn't know what to do next," he says, "so I stayed right next to Michael." His friend's hands were shaking, and an earplug fell from his ear. Then Carneal looked into Strong's eyes and said in a cracking voice, "Kill me, please. I can't believe I did that."

Carneal had killed three schoolmates, Nicole Hadley, 14, Kayce Steger, 15, and Jessica James, 17. Five others were injured, one of them paralyzed from the waist down. Many wondered in the days immediately after the bloodbath why Carneal did it. Authorities have talked about things that may have inspired Carneal, including a dream sequence in the 1995 movie Basketball Diaries in which a character played by Leonardo DiCaprio walks into a classroom and blows away several students with a shotgun. Principal Bond says Carneal was teased all his life. "This young man had a lot of hatred." Referring to Carneal's writings, Bond says the boy had "pent-up frustration that boiled over."

McCracken County Sheriff Frank Augustus says Carneal has admitted having an enemy, one, however, who was not part of the prayer circle. Augustus believes Carneal may have had co-conspirators as well, pointing out that the boy showed up with an arsenal big enough to arm five others. Police found two shotguns, two rifles and a pistol, all neatly tied up in a blanket. The weapons were supposedly stolen from a neighbor of the Carneals'. The neighbor's child has said that Carneal knew where the key to the gun cabinet was hidden. Sheriff's deputies have also learned that the home of a friend where Carneal spent the weekend contains a stash of guns. "We feel someone else knew about this," says Augustus. "If they did, they should have told someone."

The town and its churches are trying to find good in the catastrophe. There is some consolation that Hadley's heart and lungs were donated to save other lives. Signs are going up declaring WE FORGIVE YOU, MICHAEL. "I can't speak for him," says Ben Strong, "but I think he felt regret." "The only thing left to do is pray," says Ben's father, Pastor Bobby Strong. On the morning after the shooting, 300 students showed up for the prayer circle. "I think it's opened a lot of people," says Ben Strong. "I think they really know there's no other place to turn."