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Jones and two other students rushed to the shooter and disarmed him.
The 18-year-old has been forced to make a decision that he hopes no one else will have to take, he told the press on Tuesday. He was shot in the calf and left thigh during the attack.
In the moment, he said, he did not consciously decide to run to danger.
"Adrenaline and tunnel vision are crazy things," said Jones, with his parents sitting by his side. "You get what you do, and later you realize what happened."
And he did not consider himself a hero, he said.
"You never expect to make that choice at any point in your life."
He approached the gunman and called his mother
Jones remembered that the shooter had entered the classroom, pulled out his gun and shouted "Nobody moves!"
Jones said that it took him a split second to "make sure it was really real and that it was really happening".
He pulled the man to the ground, he was reminded; Bialy pulled the pistol out of the shooter's hand and Castillo pushed the shooter against the wall, Jones said. Castillo was killed in the shooting.
Jones refused to identify the person they faced by name.
While he was still holding the shooter – before the police took him into custody – Jones said he had called his mother. "She has always been a solution to the problem for me," he said.
Lorie Jones, who also spoke to reporters Tuesday, said his son seemed calm when he called her to work that day.
He told her that he had been involved in a shooting in a school and that he had received several bullets in the leg. But he was fine, he said.
"Josh, are you bleeding?" she remembered asking him.
"Just a little," he said.
She said that her son "was really trying to protect me".
Jones' father, David, said he was proud of himself because he had "done a good thing," but he was also afraid for his son.
"A few centimeters in each direction, the result would have been very different," he said.
Joshua Jones said that he did not remember much of that day. "It's just a blur, really," he says.
He said that he was glad that he and his comrades had attacked the shooter together. It would have been "much worse" for all the other participants if they did not work together.
Jones said that he had learned to escape from a gunman and wait for the police, "but by that time, I just did what was best for me . "
Jones came across crutches to talk to reporters. He was recovering well after a brief stay at the hospital.
"I'm healing fast, I'm a young child," said Jones. But emotionally, he said, "I'm still in a little funk."
"I think we had dinner for two weeks in a row because of the help of our church," he said.
Looking past graduation
A celebration of the service of life in memory of Castillo is scheduled for Wednesday. The two suspects – 18-year-old Devon Erickson and 16-year-old Alec McKinney – are facing charges.
They are students at the school and face charges of murder and attempted murder, according to District Attorney George Brauchler.
Jones said that Castillo "was a wonderful person."
"He was going to college, he was doing great things and it's really sad that he had to leave so early," Jones said.
Jones said he expects graduation on May 20 to be dark because "we are missing one of the children who has been with us since the very beginning".
"Kendrick has been here for as long as I can remember," he said. "But we will always be happy to receive our diploma and continue our life."
Jones will lead a Mormon mission next year, and then he will train to become an EMT, inspired by EMTs "so incredibly helpful and kind".
"I'm just happy to be able to go home," Jones said.
Scott McLean and Ray Sanchez of CNN contributed to this report.
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