ATLANTA — Sasha Contreras was in Spanish class at Apalachee High School when the shooting started on Sept. 4 last year.

It was far enough away that she could not hear the gunfire, but an hour earlier she had been in math teacher Ana Cristina Irimie’s class.

Sasha, 17, said she left Irimie’s class happy, not realizing it would be the last time she would see her teacher alive.

Irimie was among those killed that morning, along with students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn and coach Ricky Aspinwall.

Colt Gray, who was 14, has been charged with murder, and his father, Colin Gray, was charged in connection with arming his son.

Barrow County, meanwhile, has struggled to make sense of the incident.

Several current and former Apalachee High students gathered at the state Capitol Thursday to honor the dead while wrestling with their lingering trauma.

Kyra McConatha, who was a senior there, is in college now. She was attending a statistical reasoning class and remembers texting a final goodbye to her mother. She said she still dwells on who might come through one of the unlocked doors on her college campus.

Contreras said that is a common feeling at Apalachee High, where the hallway that was the site of the shooting remains closed.

“To this day,” she said, “we are hyper aware of our surroundings.”

She remembers crying in the field after the shooting, looking for her mother, who had been substitute teaching in a class in the same hallway as the gunfire. Contreras’ older sister, Layla, kept the text message that her sister sent her that morning. The lack of punctuation — “Layla it’s real it’s a shooting it’s me sasha I love you” — underscored the urgency.

The people who lived through that event said they hoped the memory of the dead does not fade. They remarked about how routine school shootings have become, but they had no solutions to end them.

Georgia lawmakers reacted to the mass shooting by adopting a sweeping school safety bill in March. House Bill 268 was a priority for Republican House Speaker Jon Burns and passed with broad bipartisan support.

The 57-page measure requires schools to maintain records on students with troubling behavior and then share those records promptly when the student transfers to a different school, as happened at Apalachee High. The new law also pays for more mental health services, giving each school district up to three state-funded student advocates, one for every 18,000 students.

The General Assembly also passed House Bill 105, effectively treating slain teachers in the same way as armed officers by doubling to $150,000 the compensation to loved ones when a teacher is killed “in the line of duty.”

Thursday’s commemoration was coordinated by Democrats in the state House. Their caucus leader, Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, said she is a grandmother and a gun owner.

“I know first-hand the responsibility that comes with that right,” Hugley said, “and I believe deeply that we can protect the Second Amendment, and we can protect second graders at the same time.”

No Republicans participated although state Sen. Frank Ginn, R-Danielsville, who represents part of Barrow County, stood nearby, watching.

Mental health, not guns, is the problem, he said, adding that he understands the grief. Ginn lost a son in a farming accident. “The pain never goes away,” he said.

Sasha said the shooting feels “surreal … like it happened not even a week ago.”