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Student wounded in school shooting called a hero

Posted at 1:10 AM, Mar 02, 2016
and last updated 2016-03-02 16:12:05-05

MADISON TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- Ginger Weaver has four kids attending Madison Jr./Sr. High School. Monday's shooting in the school cafeteria was bound to hit close to home.

Very close, in fact: She says her son Brant Murray, 14, was sitting at a lunch table with two other boys who were shot. Both are expected to survive.

Amid the chaos in fear, Weaver says, parents have told her Brant was a hero.

"Their children said that Brant actually knocked them to the ground to get them out of the way when the gunfire actually started going off," she said.

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Shrapnel hit Murray in the calves and thighs, Weaver said; he might need surgery to have pieces removed.

"This is nothing that you can ever prepare for, so you just do the best off what you can," Weaver said.

The boys who were shot -- Cameron Smith, 15, and Cooper Caffrey, 14 -- were taken to Miami Valley Hospital. Dr. Peter Ekeh, the hospital's trauma director, said one of them was shot just one time, and the other was shot multiple times. Neither needed surgery Monday, and both are in stable condition.

MORE: Teens recovering from school shooting

According to Madison Local Schools, both boys were "doing very well and are in very high spirits."

Another student, Katherine Doucette, 14, also was injured; she wrote on Facebook that a bullet grazed her and that the injury wasn't serious.

Shooting suspect Austin Hancock, 14, faces six felony counts in connection with Monday's shooting. Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser is weighing evidence as he considers whether to take Hancock's case to adult court. For now, Hancock has denied the charges in juvenile court, the equivalent of a not-guilty plea. A pretrial date will be set for April.

'Mohawk Strong' T-Shirts Aim to Bring Unity to Community

Marla Davis has two sons -- Reid currently attends Madison Jr./Sr. high, and Randy, a Madison alumnus.

Reid wasn't hurt in the shooting, but he still took it hard.

"He came home kind of like, 'I'm OK,'" Davis said. "He took a nap, woke up and the shock hit him."

Davis, who has a T-shirt business, saw the social media coverage. One thing stood out, she said.

"People were all sharing with each other, I saw, one that said 'Mohawk Strong' -- and I thought, 'We got to do something with that,'" she said.

Since Monday, Davis has been building a design; already, she said, she's gotten 200 orders at $7 each.

"We had a girl from Georgia buy one, girls from Eaton High School have messaged me, Franklin," her son, Randy, said. "They've really come together on this."

Davis isn't making any money, she said: The plan is to donate all the proceeds to the school or the victims' families.

More important than the money, Davis said, would be the unity the message inspires.

"That is my hope. I want everyone in the community to be wearing one of these," she said.