SyncVib

She was in the same seat in the same classroom as she was during the last shooting alarm when she received texts about another one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The first time Brooke Riggs, a sophomore, came back to class after the Aug. 28 fatal campus shooting of a professor, she had tried to find a new seat, she told The Washington Post.

“I just wanted a fresh start,” she said. “I didn’t want to experience the trauma again.”

But here she was, two weeks and two days later, wondering whether she was in danger again. After the university alerted students to shelter in place, Riggs used a bench to barricade the door. She realized she’d been in lockdown for two of her 10 English classes this semester.

She and thousands of other UNC students went into lockdown about 12:55 p.m. Wednesday after the school warned of an armed person on or near campus. The lockdown was lifted at roughly 2:10 p.m., when the school told students to “resume normal activities.” The lockdown was prompted by a gunman confronting an employee of Alpine Bagel, located on campus, police said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. It was lifted after authorities confirmed that the armed man was no longer on UNC grounds.

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No shots were fired, according to a UNC spokesperson.

That “doesn’t take away from the gravity and trauma and the deep emotional pain that comes from situations like this,” Riggs said. “The UNC campus has a collective wound, and this event has exacerbated it.”

On Aug. 28, a graduate student fatally shot his faculty adviser and brought the school to a standstill for nearly three hours, according to authorities. Just a week after classes had begun, students were taking cover in classrooms and dorms. They soon tuned in to local police scanners and scrolled through the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, searching for information, an experience all too familiar to those who have lived through campus shootings this year in Jacksonville, Fla., at Edward Waters University; in East Lansing, at Michigan State University; and other schools across the country.

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Later that week, the Daily Tar Heel’s front page showed the frantic messages sent while in lockdown.

“Are you safe?” one read. “Hey — come on sweetheart — I need to hear from you,” read another.

At the boundary of campus Wednesday, Mary Margaret Barbee was standing in the parking deck of her apartment complex to go to her philosophy class when she heard the sirens.

“Not again,” she said to herself. The sophomore wasn’t sure whether it was safe enough to go back to her apartment, so she locked herself in her car and waited. She soon found out that no shots were fired, which was relieving, to an extent.

This time, a number of students had witnessed the altercation that took place inside one of the campus buildings, and had quickly informed peers that there was a gun but no shooting. As a result, many UNC students said that they felt calmer Wednesday.

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“But that doesn’t mean that all the fear from the last shooting didn’t come back to us,” Barbee told The Post.

Fewer than 24 hours earlier, she was rallying for gun laws with her friends and colleagues at the North Carolina legislature. Barbee was among the dozens of protesters who were kicked out of the building after chanting “vote them out.”

“At first the speaker introduced us to the General Assembly,” she said. “But as soon as we chanted, guards threw us out.”

For Anna Yi, a freshman who hasn’t yet had time to select a major, the second lockdown felt “incredibly unreal.”

“There’s something about calling your dad and having to say, ‘Hey, there’s a shooter on campus again,’” she said. “Because what are you going to do? Same class, same time, same … alert, it’s just a ridiculous situation.”

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When the lockdown was lifted, students weren’t sure whether they’d have to return to class. There was a sense of relief across campus once the university announced that classes were canceled for the day but would resume Thursday, students said.

“The news of another armed person and a second lockdown on our campus is concerning and traumatic,” UNC Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “Imagine the stress, the trauma and the anxiety that a second lockdown in 16 days has caused for our students and faculty and our staff.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Yi said she felt “a distinct lack of sympathy” from the administration after the second lockdown.

“Maybe [it is] a consequence of no fatalities but either way the trauma of it all is still very real,” she said. “Especially when a majority of people were in the same place as before.” Yi was also in the same classroom with the same students for both lockdowns.

Hours after the incident, Riggs was planning on getting lunch from campus — she hadn’t eaten since the lockdown began.

“I’m going to leave my dorm because I am hungry, but the whole time I will be looking over my shoulder out of fear,” she said. “Events like this make you lose your trust in security, you know?”

Susan Svrluga contributed to this report.

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