Parents Wait, Worry After Ga. School Shooting Rufus Morrow was at work when he got a phone call with the worst news he could imagine: Shots fired at his daughter's elementary school. He drove "about 90 mph" to Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy where 800 or so students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade had been evacuated Tuesday in an Atlanta suburb. The police chief says a 20-year-old man with an assault rifle and other weapons was able to slip into the school where visitors must be buzzed in by staff. The suspect, identified as Michael Brandon Hill, held one or two staff members in the front office captive for a time, the police chief said, making one of them call a local TV station. As officers swarmed the campus outside, he shot at them at least a half a dozen times with an assault rifle from inside the school and they returned fire, said DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric L. Alexander. Hill then surrendered. Morrow said he almost cried as he told his supervisor why he needed to leave. "Just the mere thought of what happened at that other elementary school happening here, it was just devastating to my soul," he said, referring to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut in December that left 26 people dead, 20 of them children. He wasn't the only one whose thoughts went to that shooting that has dominated arguments over gun control in the U.S. "I thought it wasn't going to be all right," said his 10-year-old daughter, Dyamond, a fifth-grader. I thought he was going to come into the building and hurt everybody like what happened at the other school. Hill is charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Police questioned him for hours at headquarters. There was no information on a possible court date. Alexander said police were unsure of Hill's motive and that Hill, who had an address listed in court records about three miles from the school in Decatur, had no clear ties to the school. A woman answering the phone at a number listed for Hill said she was his mother but that it wasn't a good time and rushed off the phone. Other parents also feared the worst for their children. "I was terrified," said Romaine Hudson as she clung to the hands of her 6-year-old and 8-year-old daughters, both of whom are students at the school. The only thing I could think of when I first heard of this situation was Sandy Hook. Authorities believe Hill must have walked in behind someone authorized to be there, Alexander said. He never got past the front office, where he held one or two employees captive for a time. School bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff says she was one of the hostages. In an interview on ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer," Tuff said she worked to convince the gunman to put down his weapons and ammunition. He told me he was sorry for what he was doing. He was willing to die," Tuff told ABC. She told him her life story, about how her marriage fell apart after 33 years and the "roller coaster" of opening her own business. "I told him, 'OK, we all have situations in our lives," she said. It was going to be OK. If I could recover, he could, too. Then Tuff said she asked the suspect to put his weapons down, empty his pockets and backpack on the floor. I told the police he was giving himself up. I just talked him through it," she said.