Rhode Island | Chaos and fear at Brown University

(Providence) The campus of the prestigious Brown University was the scene of yet another school shooting in the United States on Saturday, where two students lost their lives. The shooter, still nowhere to be found late Saturday evening, also injured nine people, eight of whom were in critical condition.

Martyna Kaps was leaving the review session for the final exam in her economics course when she heard “loud bangs” and saw students running from the auditorium where she was.

“There were still people in the classroom,” she wrote to the student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald. “From what I heard, many threw themselves behind the teacher’s desk and hid there to escape the bullets,” she added.

According to Brown’s website, the auditorium where this session took place has a capacity of 186 people.

Meanwhile, Owen Fick, another university student, noticed heavily armed police outside running down a street that runs through the university’s neighborhood.

Confinement

“I had no idea what was happening, but I quickly understood,” he said in an interview with the New York Timesbefore running to take refuge in the university residence where he is staying. “There were ambulances, police cars, fire trucks. They also had many stretchers,” he added.

Around 4 p.m., a shooter opened fire in an auditorium in the Barus & Holley Building housing the Faculty of Engineering and the Department of Physics – a popular study spot for students – and spread terror.

Most of the victims, including those shot, were students, Brown University President Christina Paxson confirmed. “Our current priority is to provide our support to the families affected by this tragedy, in particular to the families of the two students who unfortunately lost their lives today,” as well as to the eight other students hospitalized, she declared.

Several hours after the attack, only the shell casings at the scene of the shooting were found.

“There is a lot of chaos and a lot of fear at the moment,” said student Sophie Holman, who was there at the time of the incident. The student community was confined until mid-evening in the establishment’s buildings, while residents in the area were invited to stay at home.

Shortly after the attack, President Donald Trump said on social media that he had been informed of the shooting and that the FBI was on scene. “God bless the victims and their families!” “, he wrote.

Suspect on the run

At the end of the evening, the authorities were still looking for the suspect, about whom they know almost nothing, except that he was seen leaving the campus, dressed all in black. A video released late Saturday shows who is believed to be the suspect. We see him walking at a normal pace.

The exterior doors of the Barus & Holley building were unlocked at the time of the shooting, due to exams taking place inside. “Anyone could have accessed the building at that time,” said Providence Mayor Brett Smiley at a press briefing.

The prestigious Ivy League university is located on a hill in Providence, Rhode Island. One of its most appreciated characteristics, highlights the New York Times : it is not surrounded by a fence, but open to the whole city. This arrangement may have helped the shooter escape on Saturday.

Investigators reviewed video footage collected from throughout the campus area, and a massive search operation involved more than 400 officers from local police, university police, as well as the FBI.

Earlier, university officials sent erroneous alerts to the student community, saying that a suspect had been apprehended by authorities and that more shots had been fired around 5:30 p.m., before correcting those reports.

The “unthinkable”

Brown Police Chief Rodney Chatman described the investigation as “an evolving situation.”

According to CNN’s database, Saturday’s attack is the first shooting at a Rhode Island school since at least 2008, when the media began recording such events.

“The unthinkable happened,” Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee said at a press conference. He also indicated that the authorities will have to determine, in light of the events, whether the buildings on the Brown University campus were sufficiently secure.

With the New York Times and CNN