First-year Brown University student Benjamin DiBella was in the Sciences Library at the Providence, Rhode Island, school Saturday afternoon when someone yelled that there was an active shooter on campus.
There was — but in a nearby building, Barus & Holley, where a gunman opened fire on people in a classroom, authorities said, killing two and wounding nine others. The manhunt for the shooter was ongoing early Sunday.
DiBella said he went to the messaging board Sidechat “and saw dozens of messages, all only minutes old, noting panic and gunshots.”
What followed was a lockdown on the ninth floor, where doors were barricaded and people scrolled news feeds for information over the next 2 1/2 hours, he said.
“We were aware that police forces were gradually clearing the floors of the Sciences Library, and at times we heard them on floors above and beneath us,” DiBella said.
The Ivy League school warned everyone on campus to shelter in place after reports of the active shooter came in at around 4:05 p.m., instructing them to lock doors and silence phones. They were to run and, if absolutely necessary, fight.
The order was still in effect at midnight for the campus and surrounding neighborhoods. A perimeter had also been established, with people still waiting in administrative buildings for a law enforcement escort to leave.
Graduate student Jack DiPrimio said he was doing busywork in the lobby of an academic building about two to three blocks from where the shooting occurred.
At first, he didn’t think too much of the message alerts about an active shooter. “I had been through so many lockdowns in school and in undergrad that I wasn’t that worried,” DiPrimio said.
But he went outside and saw people running from Barus & Holley, and then he started getting texts about possible numbers of people injured.
DiPrimio said he ran into his apartment building nearby but didn’t have his keys. He recalled running out to the street again and into a nearby dorm, where a student in the building held the door open for him to run inside.
Once inside, DiPrimio said he hid alone in a bathroom in the basement for four to five hours. He turned off the lights and tried to make as little noise as possible. He passed the time by scrolling on social media. About three hours in, his phone died, so he went to the Department of Public Safety across the street to charge it. After that, DiPrimio said, they let him go back into his apartment.
As of 1 a.m., DiPrimio said, students and others were still in lockdown across campus waiting for law enforcement to clear their buildings. He said he keeps calling friends because he doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.
“A lot of us had just finished finals and there’s this crushing wave of grief and sadness,” he said. “It’s such a horrible way to end the semester.”
In his dorm room Saturday night, sophomore Satvik Paduri considered himself one of the lucky ones. He arrived home about an hour before the shooting and subsequent lockdown.
“I definitely don’t feel comfortable going out of my dorm room, just because they haven’t found the shooter,” Paduri, 19, of Texas, said. “Obviously, he could be anywhere.”
All of Paduri’s friends are safe — but there were fears when one of them, who was in the engineering building, was marked online as still being there after the shooting.
“It turns out he was able to get out, but just left his phone behind in the panic,” Paduri said. “It’s just horrifying that something like this has occurred so close to home,” he said.
Atman Shah, also a sophomore, and his friend Amber were staying with friends, six in all in a dorm where four normally live. He and Amber were having a meeting at a cafe about a block away when everyone started quickly leaving.
“You saw police cars with lights and sirens going like 60 mph down a residential road, and that’s when we knew, ‘OK, something serious is happening,’” said Shah, 19, of California.
He said it seemed likely they would all spend the night in the room.
The shock of the shooting and the panic of trying to reach friends who had left their phones behind had begun to ease by Saturday night, he said.
“As time goes on, it just becomes a deep sadness,” Shah said.
Paduri and Shah both said they are fortunate neither they nor any of their friends were hurt, and their thoughts are with the victims.
Both said they have some tangential experience of shootings in public places, describing gunfire at malls where their friends either worked or were shopping.
“But this hits a lot closer to home,” Paduri said. “It’s shocking.”
