- NEW: Both Tuff, the dispatcher admit they were terrified but tried to stay calm
- Antoinette Tuff was working at her Georgia school when a gunman entered
- She called 911 and acted as an intermediary between police and the gunman
- Tuff, dispatcher Kendra McCray hug, shed tears as they reunite in a CNN exclusive interview
(CNN) -- Barely two days ago, their paths crossed in the worst possible circumstances -- a man armed with an assault rifle had entered Antoinette Tuff's school, and she called police.
On Thursday, Tuff and Kendra McCray, the 911 dispatcher on the other end of that line, were together again, sharing an emotional hug and tears before sitting down to recount the episode with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"We made it," Tuff said with joy sparking her voice, with McCray responding, "We did."
The atmosphere for the reunion was starkly different than their original encounter as voices on opposite ends of a telephone line.
That happened at 12:51 p.m. Tuesday when, according to DeKalb County, Georgia, Police Department spokeswoman Mekka Parrish, authorities got their first call about a shooting at the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, just outside Atlanta.
Shortly before that, the gunman had slipped into the school and gone into its main office, where he shot one round into the ground.
"I knew then that it was for real," recalled Tuff, who was in there with him. "And that I could lose my life."
It was then that Tuff, bookkeeper in that school's front office, dialed 911. But she wasn't the only person that could be heard a few miles away at police dispatch -- at times, there was the voice of the suspect, later identified as Michael Brandon Hill, in the background.
The gunman used Tuff as a conduit to relay information to police, which in this case meant McCray, who took Tuff's call at the dispatch center.
In their voices, both women sounded calm throughout the call -- even as gunshots were ringing out around Tuff, and later when the suspect reached into a bag to reload his AK-47-type assault rifle.
But inside, they now admit, they were terrified.
McCray recalled Thursday how her hands were shaking, though she knew that she couldn't reveal her fears in her voice. And Tuff said she was trying to incorporate the lessons she'd learned in church to stay strong for herself, the 800-plus elementary school students in the classrooms behind her -- and for the gunman whom she came to feel for.
"I was actually praying on the inside," she recalled. "I was terrified, but I just started praying."
Antoinette Tuff hailed a hero
Early in the call, Tuff was blunt in what amounted to a vital assessment of the situation: "He doesn't want the kids. He wants the police. So back off," she told McCray. In the next breath, Tuff asked him, "And what else sir?"
The scariest moment, Tuff said, came when -- after having fired shots, several times, at police positioned outside -- the suspect went into his bag, reloaded his gun and packed his pants and jacket pockets with yet more bullets.
"I knew when he made the last call that he was going to go," she recalled on CNN. "Because he had loaded up to go."
But the tone changed over the next few frenetic minutes, much like what was happening at the school. The man with the rifle let it be known, via Tuff, that he was no longer threatening to shoot any police officers who approached; by then, he was communicating with them about where he should put his gun, where he should get down on the ground in surrender, and how police would come and get him.
All the while, the dispatcher largely remained silent -- except a few brief acknowledgments about what she'd heard, the constant clatter of her keyboard and brief praise for Tuff, including moments after police came in and detained the suspect, who by then lay prone and weaponless on the school's floor.
"You did great," McCray said to Tuff 31 long minutes after that first call came in. "You did great."
Watch Anderson Cooper 360° weeknights 10pm ET. For the latest from AC360° click here.
