CONYERS, Georgia, May 20 (AFP) - Moments after a 15-year-old boy opened fire on classmates here, Heritage High School assistant principal Cecil Brinkley stepped up and told him to "put down the gun." The student put down the gun and melted into Brinkley's arms crying "What have a I done, What have I done." Rockdale County School Superintendent Donald Pecci said he wasn't surprised Brinkley helped to end a tense drama in which six students were wounded. "He's a great educator, a guy that's been with us more than 20 years and has been an educator 39 years," Pecci said. "He is supposed to retire after this year." Asked to describe Brinkley, Pecci said, "He's a very, very private person. A very quiet kind of guy." The quiet in this rural suburb 28 miles (50 kilometers) east of Atlanta was shattered when the 15-year old shooter opened fire with a .22-caliber weapon just one month to the day after two teenage gunmen went on a shooting rampage in Littleton, Colorado, that left 15 people dead. Nathanial Deeters, a 15-year-old student, said he spoke to the shooter before the spree began. He said the boy was upset about breaking up with his girlfriend three days before. The youth is in custody in a juvenile detention facility and authorities expect to bring charges against him some time Thursday. Ralph Pickard, 64, a retired carpenter who lives behind a line of trees across the street from the high school, said he wasn't surprised by the shooting. "I've been expecting it, if not over there then somewhere else," Pickard said. For him the shooting was a copycat of the Colorado shooting, which in turn was a repeat of previous incidents, including the Jonesboro, Arkansas, shooting in March last year, when two boys ambushed fellow students killing four of them and a teacher. "The bunch out west (Colorado) followed the ones in Arkansas and wanted to outdo them and this one followed the ones out west. It's copycat, a way to solve his problems,"he said. As Pickard talked, small children played on the front lawns at his neighbors' homes, oblivious to the trouble less than a mile away. Nora Ferruzza, who lives a half-mile from the high school in a modest neighborhood on Nuggett Drive, said the students at her nine-year-old daughter's elementary school weren't told of the trouble at school. But nine-year-old Ann Marie said when her teacher locked the door to the classroom and "looked scared" she wondered what was wrong. "We found out about it," said Ann Marie, "and I was scared. I thought the boy would come hide in our tall grass. They didn't let us go outside for recess. I didn't want to go outside." Several blocks away in another part of the Old Mill neighborhood, 77-yearold C.W. Warren, a retired fireman just shrugged. "There's nothing you can do," he said. "The police can't even control the speeders around here."  