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Mason heard gunshots while he was outside with classmates, waiting for school to start. Then students were running, and a teacher was lying still on a playground basketball court, hit by gunfire.

The 12-year-old wanted to help him, but a vice principal told him to run. So Mason moved toward the building -- and that's when he saw Jose Reyes, a friend and a Sparks Middle School classmate, with a gun about 10 to 20 feet away.

"I (said), 'Please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me,'" Mason told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday from a hospital where he was being treated. "I looked at him. I saw (the gun), and he braced it and shot me in the stomach."

Authorities say Mason was the last of three people that Reyes, 12, shot with a 9 mm handgun Monday morning outside the school. Mason and another wounded student -- the first to be shot -- survived.

Authorities haven't said why they believe Reyes opened fire. Earlier this week, a 13-year-old Sparks Middle School student told CNN that many people speculated that bullying could have played a role

Reyes, according to the student, "was yelling stuff like, 'Why are you laughing at me? Why are you doing this to me?'" during the shooting.

Mason said he wasn't aware of any bullying.

"I don't think he was being bullied at all ... because if he was being bullied and I saw it, I would have stuck up for him. I was one of his friends," Mason said.

He said the shooter was nice, but sometimes started arguments with people he disagreed with.

"Anything you're talking about, (if) he doesn't agree with it, he would start arguing ... with that person about what the person said. I (saw) him doing it a lot at school," Mason said.

Reyes took his parents' handgun to school, a federal law enforcement source said. Sparks Deputy Police Chief Tom Miller said Tuesday that authorities weren't positive where the gun came from, but believe it belonged to the boy's parents. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/24/justice/nevada-school-shooting-survivor/
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