Jen Maksel knows she's one of the lucky ones. Her 7-year-old son, Bryce, escaped last Friday's carnage by fleeing hero teacher Vicki Soto's classroom when the gunman looked away. But that doesn't mean it's been easy. Her son lost three of his best friends, several classmates and two of his beloved teachers that day.
"I'm completely exhausted," she tells PEOPLE this week as Newtown, Conn., sees funeral after funeral, tiny coffin after tiny coffin. "It's just so sad."
Last Friday morning Maksel, 42, was just drifting off to sleep after working an overnight shift then putting her kids on the bus when her phones began ringing off the hook. Before she could answer them, a neighbor began pounding on her front door yelling, "There's a school shooting at Sandy Hook!"
She jumped in her car and headed to the school.
"I parked on the side of the road and just ran to the firehouse," she says. "Most of it is a blur because I was in total panic trying to find Bryce. Bryce's friends' mothers were there, too, doing the same thing. It was total chaos. I was crying hysterically."
source: People.com
