What Happened?
On Saturday, December 13, the streets of Providence, R.I. lit up with flashlights and blue and red lights in search of the gunman who opened fire on Brown University, killing 2 and injuring 9.
At about 4pm that day, a gunman entered a first floor classroom of the Barus & Holley building, which houses Brown’s engineering and physics departments. Students at the school had been busy preparing for and taking their final exams before the upcoming winter break. Mayor Smiley said the outer doors of the engineering building were unlocked at the time of the shooting. Witness accounts state that a masked man entered the classroom and started shooting. According to The New York Times, a teaching assistant leading an economics review session had hid behind a desk with 20 other students, but the students in the middle rows of the classroom had difficulty avoiding the gunfire. He had no idea of how many were hurt. It is also important to note that Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha stated that the shooting occurred in the older part of the Barus & Holley building, which has “fewer, if any cameras” and makes it more difficult to identify the shooter.
Authorities are strongly suggesting the public present any potential images or footage of the shooter. Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez had said that the individual suspected of carrying out the deadly shooting had been in the College Hill neighborhood earlier Saturday, around 10:30 a.m. local time, and was believed to be causing the scene. However, there are no distinct features of this suspect to assist them in the search. The FBI’s Boston field office offered a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the identification, arrest and conviction of the shooter. And officials are asking the public to share any possible information about the suspect’s visuals, as that is their only lead to go on since authorities have not yet determined a motive.
Who were the Victims?
The two people killed in the shooting were undergraduate students at Brown.
Muhammad Aziz Umurzakov was a first-year student from Midlothian, Virginia, who “had big dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon,” his sister said in a GoFundMe campaign. The family members are naturalized citizens who left Uzbekistan for the United States in 2011.
Ella Cook was a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama. Brown’s chapter of College Republicans of America issued a statement paying tribute to Cook’s “bold, brave, and kind heart.”
“These were two young people whose amazing promise was extinguished too soon,” Brown University President Christina H. Paxson claimed in a statement on December 18. “Both were at or near the beginning of their Brown journey — actually, they were at the beginning of a lot of things.”
Aftermath and Growing Frustration
Brown officials decided to cancel all remaining classes, exams, papers and projects for the semester.
However, this event has sparked debate on the effectiveness of campus security and surveillance because of the gaps in campus security and camera systems that allowed the shooter to escape. Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on a Brown University team said, “The fact that we’re in such a surveillance state but that wasn’t used correctly at all is just so deeply frustrating.”
Hundreds of students on campus have signed a petition to increase security in school buildings, saying that officials must do a better job in order to help protect against threats such as this one. Law enforcement experts say that college security officers are normally less trained and paid less than in other law enforcement departments, giving colleges a disadvantage when it comes to safety. When asked about college safety, Long Valley resident and Reed College senior Caitryn Tronoski says, “It’s all well and good to increase college safety in order to mitigate these happenings, but it is more important to understand why these events are occurring and take preventative measures to avoid them.”
Clearly, this tragic shooting can be regarded as an event to remember as well as a cry for increased safety of college students around the country.
