Dear Alex,
Thank you for your thoughts and concern.
The last couple of days are still unbelievable. I am still in complete shock that we were shot at during a faculty meeting. We were 12 all together (including the shooter) sitting around an oval table in a modest size conference room . There were only one door to enter/exit. The shooter was a disgruntled faculty member who didn’t get tenured after several appeals and a law suit. About 30min into the meeting, she got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us. She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head. Our chairman got it the worst as he was right next to her along with two others who died almost instantly. Six people sitting in the rows perpendicular were all shot fatally or seriously wounded. The remaining 5 including myself were on the other side of the table immediately dropped to the floor. During a reload, the shooter was rushed, and we pushed her out the hall way and closed the door. Thereafter we barricaded the door and called 911. At the time, I saw 2 dead bodies already and several wounded. Blood was everywhere with crying and moaning. I was on the phone with 911 reporting what had happened and while waiting we tried to stop the bleeding of those who we thought were still alive. In about 5 min, the campus and city police, ambulance and a SWAT team arrived. We were in a pool of blood in disbelief of what had happened.
There were 5 of us who got out relatively unscathed – I was one of them. Over the weekend, we were at the hospital looking after the 3 wounded and the family of the deceased. It is hard to have this image out of my mind and I have mixed feelings of guilt and relief that I am alive or unharmed. Now half of faculty is out of commission and we are wondering what to do. This week, the University is closed. We will attend a bunch of memorial services and funerals in the next two weeks and try to rebuild a department in the months ahead.
Hopefully we will talk more later.
Take care, Joe