CNN anchor John Berman interviewed his son, Joe, about the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting at Brown University Sunday. Joe, who does not attend the school but was on campus visiting a friend, calmly described the “scary situation” that immediately unfolded as he and others were shuttled to a safe location.
Joe had just arrived when news of the shooting made waves on campus. He explained he was signing in to visit his friend when “right in front of us, talking to a different library clerk, was a woman who was very sad on the phone. Her friend had just seen someone lying on the ground and said they had to call 911.”
“What happened immediately after was the librarian said they’ve got to lock the doors, everybody should go inside, get away from windows,” Joe continued. “And just what followed was people trying to get to safer spaces. We were up on the third floor.”
Joe immediately called his parents.
“It’s a scary situation. It doesn’t really cross your mind when you see it on the news all the time,” he admitted. “I suppose I [have] become desensitized towards it. But when it happens to you, even if you’re in a different building five minutes away, you know people, I have friends from my high school here, my best friend, a bunch of his friends know people, and it just feels a lot closer to home when it happens.”
He and his group remained in the library for seven hours before they were allowed to leave. Traveling by bus to a new location was “one of the oddest and scariest experiences of the whole endeavor,” Joe said, “because you’re bussed out with cops leading you on down the road, you take big detours around all these places, and all the Brown students go to one building, me and my other friends who are here visiting this friend, went to the other, and it’s like a natural disaster.”
Authorities announced Sunday a person of interest has been detained in connection with the shooting, which left two students dead and nine injured. Multiple reports suggest the person in question is a young man in his 20s from Wisconsin.
Major David Lapatin of the Providence Police Department also told reporters the department is limited in terms of what information can be provided. “This investigation, you know, it’s got to be run right,” he explained. “And sometimes we have to do things that, you know, aren’t in the public view as of yet.”
“It’s not that we’re hiding anything, it’s just the way we work,” Lapatin also said. “So that’s why we haven’t been able to give you much information. But we’re trying to do the best job we can. And some things we have to keep, you know, out of the public light until we’re ready to come out with everything.”
