Sharon Vercher of Abbeville, a teacher, was with a friend at the No. 3 theater in the Grand Theatre Thursday evening. The friend was on the phone with another friend in the parking lot who was freaking out because people were running out of the building saying there was a shooter inside.

“I walked out the No. 3 theater, came around the corner and employees were standing outside the door where the shooting took place, white as a sheet and in shock,” Vercher said.

A woman came out of theater No. 14.

“She was covered in blood, fingertips to elbow. She was holding her arm,” Vercher said. “She kept saying, ‘My husband. My husband.'”

Another woman came out of the theater and escorted the first woman away while Vercher asked the employees if anyone had called 911.

“Nobody said anything,” she said.

Then teacher mode kicked in. For years, schools have trained on what to do if a gunman or shooting takes place, Vercher said.

“I said, ‘We need to get everybody out the theater,'” she recalled today. “They just looked at me. They were just shocked.”

Vercher said she checked several rooms in the theater, not the one where the shooting took place, then walked out the door to see three police officers against the front wall with guns pulled.

“There were no employees to tell them what was going on. Ambulances were coming, cops were suiting up. They were getting no direction,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody going in the door.”

Everybody was running out the theater , the fire alarm was going off, people were getting in their vehicles and leaving and no one was stopping them, Vercher said.

“I could have been the shooter and gotten away with it,” she said. “Nobody stopped me. The cops didn’t even ask.”

Vercher commends the schools for having drills to prepare for such situations. More public places need to do the same, she said.

“These public places have nothing in place for anything like this,” Vercher said. “Our country, our society, is getting to that point. Everbody’s thinking, this is Lafayette. This isn’t going to happen here.”

Hospitals and schools have plans in place, she said. Theaters, malls and other public places need to so the same.

The morning after the shooting, Vercher is suffering from guilty.

“I should have done more. I should have gone in, but you just don’t know,” she said.