I think you know what happened last night, and I can’t get my mind off that in the slightest. Here I was… I was lucky. I was in my apartment when the shelter in place order went out. So, I mean I wasn’t really planning on leaving, I was in the apartment that night anyway. I was planning to get some homework done, and just, you know, maybe watch some Netflix or something. What ended up happening is I ended up not being able to do anything but watch the news in terror, because some of the people that I love most were barricading themselves in classrooms as an active shooter killed three people, injured five more, and was on the loose for four – over four hours. It wasn’t my own safety that I was worried about. I was, you know, in an apartment off campus, about a mile away from everything that was going on, and I thought it was a possibility here. He could have ended up over in my area because, you know, it took four hours to at least for the police to confirm they found him, about what ended up happening. But you know, I didn’t think. Even if he did, you know, come over to my apartment complex, I was on the fifth floor. Shades drawn, locked door, locked from the – you know, the building’s locked down too.
It wasn’t me I was worried about. But I knew people who were across the street when the shooting started. I knew people who were at club events, who, as I said before, barricaded themselves in classrooms, but unfortunately, one of them was in a room which the door swung out and couldn’t lock, so that barricade wouldn’t have done a whole awful lot. One of my friends, I mean, he wasn’t home at the time, but apparently he sent us a video that his roommate sent him of the shooter waiting outside on their lawn for a few minutes. It was definitely… It was definitely that guy too. He was wearing the same outfit as the official suspect photos. And I sat there and I waited, terrified for the safety of everyone I knew in Michigan. Then I was afraid to even check in with my friends, because I was worried that, you know, the ding went off or if, you know, their phone would lit up and somebody was near them, the shooter was near them, that could alert the shooter. But I was afraid of the silence more. I was afraid of not knowing that they were okay, and, you know, thankfully they were. All of them. All of everyone I knew of got out safe. And I’m lucky for that again, because not everyone… not everyone did. I’m still having trouble processing what happened, you know? It’s truly shocking, horrifying thing, and I guess I’d be lying if I said I never imagined it could happen here. There were multiple times when there were guns on campus last year. Actually once last year, once this year, I guess so it was… which is itself insane. But those threats never felt as real as this did. This doesn’t even feel that real. I still can’t believe that this happened.