As he takes shelter in his dorm, Brown University sophomore Satvik Paduri considers himself lucky.
He was in his dorm Saturday night as authorities hunted for a gunman who shot 10 people in a building on campus hours earlier, prompting warnings to shelter in place. But some of his friends remained locked down in libraries or in the homes of friends.
“I definitely don’t feel comfortable going out of my dorm room just because they haven’t found the shooter,” 19-year-old Texas native Paduri 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 four other friends in a dorm that normally houses four people. Shah, 19, said 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,’” Shah said.
Brown University sent alerts to students warning them to shelter in place.
“It’s been a pretty shocking day,” said Shah, of California. “As of right now, it seems like we’re spending the night in this room.”
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 have some tangential experience to shootings in public places, a sad commentary on modern life, due to gunfire at malls where their friends either worked or were shopping.
“But this hits a lot closer to home,” Paduri said. “It’s shocking.”
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