Melissa Joan Hart held back tears as she described helping kindergarteners cross a highway to escape the Nashville shooting
On Wednesday, Melissa Joan Hart shared more details about helping children escape the Nashville shooting.
"The look on her face just changed my life," she said of seeing a teacher cross the street with kids.
Hart, who lived close to Sandy Hook in December 2012, said she feels "really angry" about the Nashville shooting.
On Wednesday's episode of her podcast "What Women Watch" actor Melissa Joan Hart, who lives in Nashville, described her "bizarre" experience helping kindergarteners cross a busy highway to safely escape a shooting that occurred Monday at The Covenant School. Hart first revealed how she helped in an emotional video posted to her Instagram account on Tuesday, in which she visibly held back tears.
Hart, 46, went into more detail during a conversation with her friend and cohost Amanda Lee at the start of the podcast episode.
She said she was driving to parent conferences at a school her sons attend (which is not The Covenant School) with her husband Mark Wilkerson when they saw a helicopter. When a police officer directed them to turn, Hart said she saw a scene she said she'll "never forget."
"A teacher coming out with no abandon, just waking into the street, stopping traffic, and all of the sudden all these tiny children going by," she said. "The look on her face just changed my life."
"I was trying to understand what she's doing. Why is she taking these children on this five-lane street? What is she doing? What is her purpose? And then I'm looking and I realize she's coming out of the woods. Something's wrong," Hart continued.
"I got out of the car and I went and helped these children cross the street," Hart recalled. "And I'm picking one up off the...I'm picking one up out of the woods, they're literally coming through the woods."
Hart said she told the child, who she later found out was in kindergarten, "we're just going to cross the road." The "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" star got audibly emotional at this point in her story.
"I was hoping that she doesn't hear...she doesn't know me, so maybe she doesn't know the fear in my voice," Hart said. "But it's really quickly dawning on me...this is not a fire drill...they are running across the road. Something is going on really bad. Something is worse behind them than them crossing this street and putting children on the side of basically a highway."
Hart said there were no police officers at the location, and that the teachers were so focused on saving the children that "they didn't make eye contact." She said she realized later that the teachers were "running for their lives" as they were also trying to save the "babies that are running across the street."
"It was literally like a mama duck and her little ducklings like running across the street," Hart recalled of the scene before about 200 cop cars had come.
She said she didn't want to approach children at first because "I wasn't sure I could keep it together to go comfort them." But eventually, she bonded with a little girl who liked her shirt.
Hart said she also helped a woman reunite with her children
After she knew the children were safe, Hart said she encountered a woman whose children were in the school. She prayed with the woman and then on the advisement of a police officer, Wilkerson and Hart drove the stranger to the fire station. The woman was the first to arrive and was quickly reunited with her kids.
Hart described the experience as "insane" and "the saddest thing I'd ever witnessed."
Six people were killed in the shooting on Monday, including 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Mike Hill, 61, were also killed, according to Nashville police.
On her podcast and on Instagram, Hart revealed that this isn't her first time living near a town affected by a school shooting. She said she also lived in Connecticut in December 2012 when the school shooting at Sandy Hook occurred.
"My son was in first grade. The schools were built sort of identical. If you remember Sandy Hook, the shooter went in the building, turned left, and basically took out the first grade. And that would've been my son had it been our school," Hart reflected on 2012 and Sandy Hook on the podcast.
"I felt the anger set in today like I started to get really angry," she said of her feelings on the Covenant School shooting.
The "Clarissa Explains It All" star is a known conservative and marched in 2016 with New York chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, according to Newsweek. On the podcast, she urged people to support Everytown for Gun Safety or Sandy Hook Promise if they wanted to help.
A representative for Hart didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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