In the day since a gunman at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte entered Classroom 236 in the Kennedy Building and opened fire, killing two students and injuring four, faculty, staff, students, and university officials have begun the slow work of grieving. Recovery will be slower still.
Chancellor Philip L. Dubois on Wednesday identified those killed as Riley Howell, 21, and Ellis Parlier, 19. Four students were injured: Rami Alramadhan, 20, Sean Dehart, 20, Emily Houpt, 23, and Drew Pescaro, 19. The injured are “doing OK,” Dubois told members of the campus at a vigil on Wednesday evening.
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In the day since a gunman at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte entered Classroom 236 in the Kennedy Building and opened fire, killing two students and injuring four, faculty, staff, students, and university officials have begun the slow work of grieving. Recovery will be slower still.
Chancellor Philip L. Dubois on Wednesday identified those killed as Riley Howell, 21, and Ellis Parlier, 19. Four students were injured: Rami Alramadhan, 20, Sean Dehart, 20, Emily Houpt, 23, and Drew Pescaro, 19. The injured are “doing OK,” Dubois told members of the campus at a vigil on Wednesday evening.
The shooter, Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, was taken into custody at the scene. He had been a student in the anthropology class that was underway at the time, The Charlotte Observerreported, but the university has said he withdrew from classes this semester.
You’re either going to run, you’re going to hide and shield, or you are going to take the fight with the assailant.
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Howell saved lives by tackling Terrell shortly before the police arrived, around 5:40 p.m., police officials said in a media conference on Wednesday afternoon. Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said he had told Howell’s father he would have closure and answers.
Without Howell’s actions, the assailant might not have been disarmed, and more lives might have been lost, Putney said. His family said in a statement that Howell was “everyone’s protector.” Putney repeatedly called the younger Howell a hero.
“His son — seeing exactly what was going on — did exactly what we train people to do,” Putney said. “You’re either going to run, you’re going to hide and shield, or you are going to take the fight with the assailant. Having no place to run and hide, he did the last.”
That training — “Run, hide, fight” — is part of active-shooter preparation that is now routine. Schools and colleges nationwide have been using it in the wake of mass violence, as they funnel resources into campus safety and mental health. In the last decade, educators and students have expressed anxiety that a shooting may happen, and agony when it does. Charlotte has become one of several institutions with the grim task of putting its safety and mental-health protocols into practice.
re-upping this this morning bc it still feels like we just went through a huge trauma cycle bc of gun violence near campus and here we go again. this should not be happening at all, let alone every third academic year. https://t.co/GrJ8paFbMo
Theresa Rhodes, associate director of training at Charlotte’s counseling center, was teaching a class in the center when the lockdown alert went out, she said. She and her students barricaded themselves in the room. Her graduate students knew what to do, she said: Put the table in front of the door, get down low.
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Rhodes’s students were “both scared and prepared,” she said. “I think their preparedness helped them to manage some of their anxiety.”
Rhodes and other staff members at the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services, including David B. Spano, its director, reorganized the center’s schedule to allow for the “steady stream” of students needing help. Rhodes estimated about 40 students have made appointments in response to the shooting. She has spoken individually with three.
“We’re seeing students who were actually in the classroom” where the shooting took place, Rhodes said, as well as students whose “sense of safety on campus has been shaken.” Some are angry with the shooter, she said, and others show traditional marks of posttraumatic stress disorder: problems with sleeping, and hearing noises that sound like the event.
One student was in the classroom where the shooting took place and has relived seeing and hearing the shooter, Rhodes said. She gave him strategies to ground himself and process the trauma, she said. Another student was in the library, near Kennedy Hall, and heard the gunfire, wondering if it was in her building.
“If they weren’t in the classroom, they’re feeling like they were,” Rhodes said.
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Students in Kennedy 236 and the library on Tuesday afternoon have given their own accounts on Twitter and to local reporters.
The shooter at UNCC didn’t say anything. He just started shooting during our final presentations and we all ran out. I’m praying for everyone that got hit and UNC Charlotte as a whole. #CharlotteStrong
Red Cross and crisis-response officials were on hand for students and family members on Tuesday, Rhodes and Spano said, and administrators directed students toward the counseling center on Wednesday.
Soon after the shooting, a wave of support rolled in from other counseling directors who had endured similar tragedies, Spano said: Ohio State University. Virginia Tech. The University of Texas at Austin. They offered to share what they had learned from experiences with violence, he said, in the hope that it might help.
“Honestly, most of us who work in the field are fearful that something like this is going to happen,” Spano said.
The last five years have seen at least six shootings on or near North Carolina colleges, according to USA Today. Last year, authorities arrested a UNC-Charlotte student who had written about his desire to commit a similar shooting and kept the university’s emergency-response guide attached to his wall.
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Grieving and Recovering
Community members gathered at a vigil at 6 p.m. on Wednesday in the university’s student center. Over Tuesday night and Wednesday, they mourned those killed and wounded.
The university would return to normal operating status at midnight on Wednesday, Dubois told reporters. Exams, which were scheduled to begin this week, remain canceled through the weekend. Dubois visited with victims in the hospital on Wednesday, he said.
Campus operations may resume, but the effects of Tuesday’s events will continue to be felt.
Students who experienced the shootings will be followed by the memories for years to come, said Melissa Strompolis, who studied the trauma of gun violence and its impact on communities as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is now an affiliate faculty member.
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Therapy and counseling are beneficial in many ways to victims of campus shootings, she said, but the memory and the emotions felt during such incidents come in waves after each new event. Strompolis heard from a former classmate right after the news broke. She had experienced a shooting, and the news from North Carolina sent her back.
“This breaks my heart,” Strompolis said. “At the same time, I think there have got to be ways we can take an ecological perspective on these incidents to address them and prevent them from happening in the first place.”
Administrators should think of campus violence from a student-first perspective, rather than a service-first perspective, she said. Those affected by trauma handle the grief differently, and a university should be ready to assist those who need immediate support, Strompolis said, as well as those who need help in the years to come.
Rhodes said the counseling center is prepared for immediate response and for any follow-up meetings students may need.
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“These next days, weeks, and months will test our collective strength,” Chancellor Dubois said during Wednesday’s vigil. “But as I said yesterday, we have no course but to hold up each other, to work through this together, and to reaffirm our 49er purpose. UNC-Charlotte cannot be, and will not be, defined by this tragedy. We must be defined by how we respond to it.”
Steven Johnson is an Indiana-born journalist who’s reported stories about business, culture, and education for The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.