She smelled smoke, heard a bang and then saw a broken window. Tween survivor recalls the fear and chaos of Minneapolis attack

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By Shimon Prokupecz and Rachel Clarke, CNN

Minneapolis, Minnesota (CNN) — For a few hours, as she slept with her parents in their bed, Chloe Francoual’s mind told her that the bullets, the screams and the terror at Annunciation Catholic Church weren’t real, and she was able to sleep.

But when she woke Thursday, two of her schoolmates were still dead, with more in the hospital, after a shooter targeted the first Mass of her school year in Minneapolis.

“I’m trying to stay really happy to get my mind off stuff, because it was really hard yesterday,” she told CNN. “My mind just keeps on replaying it.”

She spoke to a counselor, and that helped, her father Vincent Francoual said. And later she asked if she could speak to us too.

Chloe, a smart and eloquent 11-year-old with bouncy blonde hair, has a very clear memory of where she was and what happened.

After the first two days of school were spent sorting things out, it was time for their first Mass at the church next door. “It was supposed to be a really good day,” she said. “We had all our stuff ready. We were so excited. Even people who didn’t like school were really excited.”

Older children like Chloe picked up “buddies” from the lower grades who they would help to mentor and chaperone, and the children headed to the front of the church for the service, dressed in their green polo shirts and navy shorts and skirts.

There was a new priest who was also excited, Chloe said, and he gave a short welcoming speech. Then there was a song, and a teacher recited a prayer in English. As another teacher began a prayer in Spanish, whispers began in the young congregation: “Can you smell smoke?”

“The teacher was in the middle of saying our prayers, and then we heard just one shot,” Chloe said. “I thought it was a firework like everybody else. The second shot was just everybody covering their ears. The third shot was when everybody started ducking low and all these shots were like slow, until the fourth shot. It started getting faster and faster, and then that’s when everybody took into action.”

Chloe said she looked in the direction of the noise, at the church’s stained-glass windows. She saw a spark, then a hole and realized what was happening. A shooter was on the other side of those windows, firing in. Police said they recovered approximately 116 rifle rounds, one live round from a handgun and three shotgun shells. Chloe said the bullets flew toward the front of the church where the children were sitting.

As the danger became clear to everyone, some children went under the pews, some took cover behind pillars and others like Chloe ran to a classroom off the nave. “In the pre-K room, everybody started to help, especially the kids and all the older buddies. We all started to help, like putting tables on the doors, locking the doors, putting all this stuff on the doors as much as we could,” she said.

“People were screaming, ‘Put the tables on, put the tables on, they’re going to get in!’ And so, everybody’s instinct was just to put stuff — like crayon boxes literally — on the tables.”

“As little it was, it helps a lot.”

At the end, they heard one more gunshot and then footsteps. “We thought it was the man, but it was the police,” she explained. “We smelt smoke after they kicked open the door and they let us outside, where we saw everybody hurt.”

Chloe’s father, sitting beside her in their yard as she tells us her story, wipes his eyes. He’s already heard his daughter tell the counselor she thought she would die. And though his daughter looks like she is rebounding, he knows this event will stay with her forever. And that she is also one of the luckier ones.

Their neighborhood and school make up a small and close-knit community where people know each other.

The Francouals vacationed with Fletcher Merkel, the sport-loving 8-year-old boy who was killed, and his family. And Chloe said Harper Moyski, the 10-year-old also killed in the pews, was “kind to everybody.”

“Everybody knew them, everybody was friends with them,” she said.

Chloe shows maturity and empathy beyond her years as she takes time to think also of her friends’ parents. “Those parents were super nice. They will help you any time that they could. And when their child passed away, they must have been so sad and I feel terrible about it.”

She’s been able to check on a friend in the hospital thanks to a group text and hear more stories of survival from those with wounds caused by bullets and flying glass.

But she’s also upset that she didn’t do more.

“What I feel so sorry about is that I left my little buddy and my friend, which I feel so guilty about,” she said. “They’re all good, I just never told them anything. I never looked at them and said, ‘Get down.’ They had to go on their own, which I feel so guilty about because most people would think first about their buddy.”

Next to her, her father reminds her gently that she did exactly what she had been taught in the “Run, Hide, Fight” mantra. And while they had practiced active shooter drills at school, it had never been a part of her church experience.

Francoual asks his daughter if she feels safe.

“I don’t feel that safe in the church anymore,” she replies. “You’re supposed to go to the church to feel safe. I don’t feel safe anymore in that church.”

She rationalizes that it won’t happen again, but already knows that the shooting will stay with her.

“When I step foot in that church, it’s going to give me flashbacks,” she said. “My mind just keeps on replaying it till like, ‘This happened, this is going to happen again.’”

She hopes her classmates won’t all be talking about the shooting when they go back to school. And she hopes there won’t be Mass at the church. But when Francoual asks if she would like to go back to his native France, she’s quick with her answer: “I actually kind of like my school.”

And then this girl, who ran to school on Wednesday in excitement and to avoid a tardy slip, realizes the shooter has taken something from her.

“I’m mad because now I’m not going to be really excited to go back to school,” she said.

Chloe has made her parents promise not to hide updates on the investigation from her as she processes what happened.

She notes the shooter was a former student at her own school, who came back on Wednesday armed with three guns.

As she talks, she seems to process a little bit more of what she went through — the way excitement and joy turned to chaos and fear in a moment, but with a long-lasting effect that has made her nervous when her father goes out to walk the dog, needing to close any open window, and jump at any sudden noise.

“It doesn’t feel like a dream anymore. Like it actually happened. People are hurt in the hospital right now. People passed and the doctors couldn’t do anything about it. Yeah, so it’s real.”

Francoual said it was therapeutic to let his daughter talk while he listened. And he marveled at her calmness as she recounted the horrors.

But Chloe sees her father’s eyes still red and wants to give him some advice. “I want him to know that everybody’s safe. I want him to know that the people who passed, they’re all up in heaven. And they are always with us, even if we can’t see them. And I want him to know that everybody can talk because everybody has gone through this. So, he can talk whenever he wants.”

Francoual wipes his eyes again. As proud as he is of his daughter, his heart seems heavy. “The shooting is not a gang shooting, it’s not drug related, it’s just this weird culture, a mixture of sick people getting a gun. I don’t even have anger to the shooter. I’m just very sad for everyone.”

He also knows he will not be the last parent to feel this.

“I have no way to tell people it’s going to be OK, because it’s not OK.”

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CNN’s Bonney Kapp and Evelio Contreras contributed to this story.