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A student fatally shot a 15-year-old classmate during a dispute Thursday at a Knoxville high school, as other teenagers watched in horror as the victim clutched his chest and fell to the floor.

Paula Umberger, a current Heritage High School geography teacher, taught at Central last year. Umberger heard from a student who arrived late to class and had learned about the shooting that had occurred minutes earlier.

“My first thought was whether it was one of my students,” she said.

Umberger viewed several stories about the shooting on the Internet and then called one of the school’s teachers for more information. The Central teacher identified the victim as Ryan McDonald, said Umberger.

McDonald was in her class the first semester of last school year, and Umberger was visibly shaken by his death.

“It was very upsetting to know you had a student (who was murdered). I kept thinking if there was anything else I could have done to help him,” she said.

“Central is going through such hard times. You hear parents talk all the time about not knowing if the school is right for their children,” said Umberger. “I really feel for the school; and I know even more parents will be concerned about the school. It just makes you wonder. Central has such good people and great kids.”

The suspect and victim knew each other, according to Knox County School System Superintendent Bill McIntyre.

The shooting happened shortly after 8 a.m. at the Central High School cafeteria, Knox County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Bill Roehl said, and the suspected shooter was taken into custody minutes later on a nearby street.

“This wasn’t a shooting that was a random act,” Roehl said. “It was an individual directing his aggression toward another individual, not the school or the students inside the school.”

The cafeteria was a popular place to gather before classes started at 8:30 a.m., students said. Chad Griffin, 15, and Josh Matthews, 14, said that they were sitting about 10 feet away from the victim and talking when they heard a sharp noise.

Griffin at first thought someone had dropped a book and then looked around.

“He got shot and started walking, and he was holding his chest. There was blood everywhere. And then he fell and his arm hit me,” Griffin said.

Matthews said he thought it was a fake at first but then realized the shooting was real.

“I took off running and ran outside and called my mom,” Matthews said.

Students in the cafeteria began crying and scrambling to leave, while others tried to get in the room, thinking they had missed a fight, witnesses said.

Students began to gather around the victim, said freshman Jared Wohlford, 14.

“Everybody started running out real fast saying, ‘He got shot,’” he said.

McDonald died at University of Tennessee Medical Center. No other students were injured.

The school, which has about 1,400 students, was placed on lockdown after the shooting. Classes were dismissed and students were bused to a nearby church so they could be picked up by their parents.

Heather Mize, who works near Central, said that by 10 a.m. the scene near the high school was one of controlled disorder.

“I shouldn’t say chaos,” she said. “It wasn’t chaos, but you could see kids up and down the sidewalk and cars trying to figure out where to go and cops trying to keep everything under control.”

There was no fear evident in the crowd, Mize said.

“Not that I saw,” she said. “Some of them looked ... maybe shocked. Everybody was just trying to figure out what to do. I think it will take a while to (sink) in what actually happened.”

At a gas station located near the intersection of Essary Road and Broadway, a mother and her two children stopped to talk about the aftermath.

Josh Ferrer, 16, was on a bus when the shooting occurred.

“When I came off the bus, everybody was running around — the police were rushing into the lunch room, and the teachers were rushing us into home room and trying to keep us safe because we were in lockdown.”

In order to minimize panic, the teachers tried to limit the students exposure to broadcast news about the shooting, Josh said.

“They told us to turn off the TVs,” he said.

His sister, Elicia Ferrer, who has already graduated, wondered about security measures at the school.

“I’m really surprised the schools don’t have metal detectors yet,” she said. “I’m just waiting to see how they handle what happened. It’s not really a rough school compared to where we’ve been.”

The Ferrers previously lived in Memphis and other places, they said.