Gunshots, then 12 hours of fear at Brown University

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – It began shortly after 4pm, when a masked man burst into a lecture hall at Brown University with a rifle, yelled something incomprehensible, and began spraying bullets at the 60 or so students who were there for an economics study session before their final exams
.

Some students were able to escape through the side doors. Others could only hide, ducking under chairs and behind desks. Two were killed, and nine wounded.

Mr Joseph Oduro, a 21-year-old senior and teaching assistant who was leading the study session, said he took cover behind a desk with about 20 others.

“The students in the middle were impacted the most,” he said. “Many of them were lying there, and they were not moving.”

Twelve hours after the shooting began, US marshals and local officers detained a person of interest at a hotel in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 32km south of campus. That person was released without being charged
, the authorities announced in a news conference late on Dec 14.

The search for the shooter was continuing, the authorities said, as they asked for the public’s help and said they would be searching for video footage from the neighbourhood near the shooting scene.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said local officials were no longer advising residents to shelter in place, and that there would be “an enhanced law enforcement presence in Providence and on the Brown campus”.

Most students first learnt of what was happening through a phone alert, at 4.22pm on Dec 13, a few minutes after sunset on a wintry day, while many were studying for their final exams.

The alert blared a shocking warning: There was an active shooter at the Barus and Holley engineering and physics building. The alert directed people on the Providence, Rhode Island, campus to shelter in place.

Mr John Goncalves, a Brown alumnus who represents the neighbourhood on the Providence City Council, said he was at a public event when his phone was overwhelmed with incoming messages.

As he pieced together the startling information about what had happened, “it was almost impossible to process”, he said. “This is a community where people feel safe.”

But late on Dec 13, students and nearby residents on lockdown peeked from their windows to see an overwhelming police response, with officers wearing armour and helmets and toting weapons, something entirely out of character for their neighbourhood.

The streets near the school are a popular entertainment spot for students and Providence residents, who go there for restaurants, bars and a theatre. The neighbourhood, decked out for the holidays, was transformed on Dec 13, abandoned by residents and swarming, instead, with armed police.

Military-style vehicles idled at intersections. Circling helicopters thrummed overhead. The hundreds of officers stood out, in particular, for the rifles and shotguns they carried – fearsome weaponry not often seen on the streets of an Ivy League college town. Officers fanned out through the neighbourhood, searching for the shooter, shining powerful lights down alleyways and into parked cars.

Dozens of ambulances, lights flashing, queued up ominously in long lines on side streets, in case there was more shooting, and more victims.

Mr Smiley said he met a wounded student at the hospital who was thankful for active shooter drills in high school.

“We shouldn’t have to do active shooter drills, but it helped,” the mayor said, “and the reason it helped, and the reason we do these drills, is because it’s so damn frequent.”

Mr Spencer Yang, 18, who was shot in the leg in the science lecture hall, recalled little about the shooter, who entered at the rear of the auditorium-style classroom. He remembered vividly, though, that at the bang of gunshots, students began to run towards the front of the downward-sloping classroom.

“I didn’t make it all the way to the front. I just lay down between some seats,” Mr Yang said.

“After the shots rang out, it was kind of silent. Once he was gone, I just remember a bunch of people started screaming.”

Many sheltered in place for hours after the initial alert until police arrived to search them and their buildings. Some 2,000 students were evacuated; many ended up initially at a nearby athletics centre, before being relocated to stay with friends or in hotels.

Ms Annelise Mages, 17, a first-year pre-med student from San Diego, was studying for her chemistry final in the high-rise Sciences Library, which overlooks the building where the shooting took place. She first noticed police lights, and then received the university alert.

From the windows on the fourth floor, she and other students watched emergency medical teams tend to injured people; one student was brought out on a stretcher, holding his arm.

She and dozens of other students barricaded doors with white boards and chairs. Some hid in bathrooms.

Two or three hours later, about seven police officers broke down the barricades. With the shooter still at large, police evacuated the students at gunpoint, screaming at them to hold their hands up, Ms Mages said. Some students were in tears.

The group then spent another four to five hours in the building’s basement before they were bussed to the university’s athletics centre. There, they were split into male and female lines and patted down. Hundreds of students waited in a line for food.

When Ms Mages exited the athletics centre at around 3am on Dec 14, after nearly 12 hours of lockdown in several different locations, the first thing she noticed was the newly fallen snow.

“The first snow of the year,” she said. “We’re all in mourning, and it’s winter, and I’m not sure what the spring at Brown will look like.” NYTIMES