‘Are my friends alive?’: Brown University students recount harrowing moments during deadly mass shooting

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — A day after a gunman opened fire on Brown University’s campus, killing two students and injuring nine others, ABC6 spoke with students about the moments when they were first notified of the shooting.

“Your first thought is, are my friends alive,” Brown University student Roman Novy-Marx said.

Around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Brown University sent a text alert to students and staff that there was an active shooter on campus.

“It was really scary, I actually fled with some of my friends to the woods,” Novy-Marx said. “Got updates periodically, just, you know, through our friends, checking on everyone to make sure they’re okay.”

In the message, Brown University told students to shelter in place.

Brown University sophomore Leanna Lee was at the university’s bookstore when she got the first text.

“I was actually going back up the stairs to get something that I had forgotten when two of my friends that I’d run into there were like, ‘Get up here, now, because there’s an active shooter,'” Lee said.

She said a group of about ten students sheltered inside an office on the second floor of the bookstore, grabbing whatever they could for safety.

“There was no lock, so we barricaded the door, with like, a shelf and a bunch of boxes,” Lee said. “We had these random tripods that we were ready to use as weapons, and we just blocked that door, turned off the lights.”

Novy-Marx and Lee both said they waited hours for updates.

“We were probably out there for a good three or four hours,” Novy-Marx said. “We couldn’t go back to campus, we wouldn’t have even been able to get into our own homes.”

“Just sitting in silence…there wasn’t a whole lot that we could do,” Lee said.

After five hours, Lee was brought to the reunification center, joining hundreds of other students.

“It felt comforting seeing that many people alive and well, ” Lee said, “Reunited with their friends, sitting around on cushions, or like playing basketball and just trying to be alive and be human.”

The shelter in place was lifted Sunday morning.

“The general sentiment, at least how I feel, is everyone just wants to get out of here and go home, you know, see our families and just, you know, in a way, just kinda forget about this because its hard to think about,” Novy-Marx.