When Brown sent its first alert at 4:22 p.m. on Saturday, informing students of the active shooter on campus, Breana Alcantara ’27 was in the middle of taking a final exam.
The exam, for PHYS0030: “Basic Physics A,” was proctored by teaching assistants, Alcantara wrote in a message to The Herald. There was no professor in the lecture hall in Salomon Center — about a seven-minute walk from Barus and Holley.
At around 4:30 p.m., one of the teaching assistants announced the news of an active shooter on campus.
“Before I even grabbed my phone, the girl next to me said, ‘Barus and Holley, two dead,’” Alcantara wrote. “Those words keep replaying in my head.”
Some TAs left the auditorium to ensure people were accounted for, checking the overhead balcony and basement. Other students, like Alcantara, “took a minute to process,” she said. Some continued taking the exam.
When students realized they were in the largest lecture hall on campus — the De Ciccio Family Auditorium — a new concern arose: “That we might be next,” Alcantara wrote.
Students began barricading any points of entry they could identify with bags, tables and whiteboards. But despite their efforts, Alcantara added, “there was an air of defeat and desperation” in the room.
“We all shared the same thought: if anyone wanted to come in, they could,” she wrote. The auditorium was “wide open,” she added, and the balcony “gives a clear view of almost the entire lecture hall.”
As students hid between the rows of seats, they “clutched onto their exam papers” in fear. Some people “had their jackets and parkas over their heads,” Alcantara wrote.
Alcantara was hiding “right along the aisle” and “just about three rows down” from the main entrance to avoid being exposed to the balcony, she wrote.
“Once I put my head down, I just started to cry and pray,” she wrote. “At this point, one of my hands was holding (my friend’s), and the other was sending ‘I love you’ texts to my family and friends.”
Immediately after the TA’s announcement, Alcantara had been overcome “with fear” that her boyfriend — who had been in the engineering building that day — was in the room where the shooting occurred, she wrote.
But after turning on her phone, which she had turned off during the exam, she found numerous texts and missed calls — from her boyfriend, as well as several of her close friends, confirming they were safe.
At around 5:20 p.m., Providence police “started banging on the door” and began running up and down the aisles of the nearly 600-person lecture hall, Alcantara wrote.
After 30 minutes of sweeping, police officers led students to the basement, where the students remained until midnight, Alcantara wrote.
But even after Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority buses came to pick up students to be evacuated to the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center at 12:30 a.m., “it took a while to get there,” she wrote.
‘Suspended above everything’: The scene from the fourth floor of the Sciences Library
Unlike many other students, Annelise Mages ’29 was not initially alerted to the active shooter on campus through a text message. For Mages, the first sign of the situation was the flashing of police lights on the street below her fourth-floor window at the Sciences Library, where she had been studying for a chemistry final exam, just across the street from Barus and Holley.
Several students then gathered at a window facing MacMillan Hall. “We could see two students who had been brought out from Barus and Holley,” she said in an interview with The Herald. Mages said the students looked like they had been shot.
While she watched the students “being tended to by several (emergency medical services) responders,” a barrage of text messages began to flood her phone, she added. Then, she received the Department of Public Safety alert.
“That’s when people started closing the blinds and barricading one of the stairwells that we knew wasn’t locked,” Mages said.
She also noted that students could not control the light switches on the floor. While she was watching live news feeds, she “could see the fourth floor (of the SciLi) lit up.”
Although she had initially gone to the library to study by herself, she “ended up forming a bit of a group with people who (she) had never met,” she said. Throughout the time they spent barricaded upstairs, they “stuck together.”
On the fourth floor, Mages said students were “almost suspended above everything that was going on.”
“The entire city felt like it was bathed in red and blue lights,” she added.
After about two hours, teams of police officers broke through the barricades of whiteboards and chairs that Mages and other students had put up against the stairwell and began patting down the students.
“When a gun was pointed at my face and at the face of the people around me, despite knowing that that was in the hands of someone who was coming to save me, there is still some of that … fight-or-flight response that has continued to stay with me,” Mages said.
The police team then moved towards the fourth-floor bathroom, from which “about 20 people filed out,” Mages said. Mages estimated that 100 students were sheltering in place on her floor.
Armed officers herded students down the stairwell into the basement of the building. Mages only brought her coat, scarf and phone with her.
In the basement, students tried to distract themselves. Mages said that she and her friends invited others to watch the movie “Elf,” while other students played card games or video games.
After around four hours, the agents in the basement announced that students would be taken “far away” on buses to an undisclosed location, she said.
Mages left the building through the SciLi lobby — which she said was “packed” with around 70 police officers — to Thayer Street, which “was eerily abandoned.”
“There were hundreds of emergency vehicles, police cars, ambulances, that were still in the streets waiting to secure the perimeter,” Mages said. “They still had all of their lights on, but the sirens were off, so everything was very silent.”
‘One of the yummiest pastas I’ve had’: Sheltering under the Ratty
Aamina Chaudhry ’28 was seconds away from leaving the Sharpe Refectory — the largest dining hall on campus and a six-minute walk from Barus and Holley — when she received a text from a friend alerting her to the shooting.
“Music was still playing in the kitchen, people were still chatting with their friends, so at first I didn’t know if what was happening was real,” she wrote in a message to The Herald. But then the “panic” set in.
As students learned of the incident, they started sheltering in place in the main dining room and “staying away from windows,” she wrote.
“We all felt so in the dark,” she recalled. She and friends in the Ratty tried to piece together any information they had, and eventually, “words like ‘review session’ and ‘principles of econ’ started to float around,” she wrote.
As an economics concentrator herself, Chaudhry wrote that her “heart somehow sunk further” the more she learned about the attack. When she and her friends didn’t hear back from their friends in the department for hours, the “painful” feeling grew.
Another student, Talia Yett ’26, reached the Ratty “a couple of minutes before the alert.” The doors were “already locked,” they wrote in a message to The Herald. They only managed to slip into the dining hall as another person was exiting.
In the dining hall, people were “confused and uncertain,” Yett recalled.
After about two hours, staff at the Ratty began moving students to the building’s basement, normally used for food storage. Chaudhry watched as dining workers brought “boxes of bananas, apples, pretzels, popcorn, water and other drinks” for the 100 to 140 students, in Chaudry’s estimate, sheltering in place there.
Due to poor cell service in the basement, receiving alerts or information was sometimes “a little slow,” Yett wrote. Dining hall staff periodically went to each area of the basement to keep students updated as staff became aware of new updates, Yett added.
“The compassion and care that was shown to students by the staff was truly admirable,” Chaudry wrote, “even when they were probably scared for themselves and wanted to be home safe with their families.”
At around 10 p.m., staff accompanied students back upstairs to the main dining room, where they prepared and served dinner — which included pasta, pizza and fries, Chaudhry wrote. The ice cream machines were also still running for students when they returned upstairs.
“I don’t know if I was just hungry … but it was one of the yummiest pastas I’ve had at (the) Ratty,” she added. “I feel like they made it with extra love.”
‘They told us to not open the door’: Hiding in the Rock
On the first floor of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library — a building less than half a mile from Barus and Holley — Nicole Adegoke ’26 was with her boyfriend, who received a text from a friend alerting him to the shooter at 4:10 p.m.
At 4:22 p.m., when Brown sent out its first alert, everyone around Adegoke “froze,” she wrote in a message to The Herald.
“I immediately called my mom to let her know what was going on,” Adegoke added.
Soon after, a woman who Adegoke believes may have been a librarian at the Rock “ran in and screamed for everyone to hide (or) get under a desk.” Right away, “I told my mom I loved her and hung up,” she recalled.
Adegoke wrote that she and several others were hiding under a desk in a Rock study room on the first floor. One wall in the study room was made entirely of glass, leaving them exposed.
Students in the library “were terrified at this point,” and people worried that the shooter could be in the Rock, she wrote. Adegoke and her boyfriend, both seniors, “tried to comfort” the first-year students they were hiding with, “but we were also scared out of our minds,” she wrote.
“One of the girls I was hiding with started to cry and say she didn’t want to die,” Adegoke recalled.
The woman from earlier returned “about an hour later” to bring students to a safer hiding location — with a door that locked — in the library, Adegoke wrote. As they walked to the other room, Adegoke passed tables where students had left their belongings.
“It was so eerie — you could tell that everyone quite literally dropped everything and ran,” she wrote.
Then, as they were hiding in the new location, the students “heard a yell and a knock on the door” by someone who identified themselves as a police officer. Adegoke, who “wasn’t sure” if the individual was truly with law enforcement, called the police. “They told us to not open the door and that they would send police to our location,” she wrote.
Officers arrived at the scene around 30 minutes later and “yelled at us to hold our hands up as they escorted us to another room,” she wrote. There, Adegoke met with her friends. “We were able to console one another and try to distract ourselves,” she recalled.
Soon after, Adegoke learned that one of the people she had texted who had not responded was shot and injured. Adegoke did not share additional details about the status of her friend.
‘Doing my part’: Sharing snacks with dormmates
Meanwhile, on North Campus, about half a mile from Barus and Holley, Isabella Dasilva ’29 was in her first-year dorm when she received the first DPS alert.
Though Dasilva was enrolled in ECON 0110: “Principles of Economics” and had considered attending the review session where the mass shooting took place, she had decided against it.
“It was just cold out, and I didn’t want to walk,” she wrote in a message to The Herald.
The alert came as she was studying for the course’s final exam.
“I immediately called my parents and family to tell them I was okay,” she wrote. “I didn’t want them to worry about me.”
Dasilva left her room and found other residents in her hall discussing the alert. They were “freaking out about their people who were either there or nearby,” she recalled. “We listened to the police radio online, the broadcasts, everything.”
Around 6 p.m., Dasilva realized “everyone in the dorm must be getting hungry.” She offered the food she had in her dorm to residents in her building and distributed cups of macaroni and cheese to her neighbors.
“I was just doing my part because I was able to,” she added. “In the short time I’ve been here, this place has given me so much.”
At around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, Dasilva left campus to return home — but not before leaving behind “goldfish, pretzels, water and granola bars” for the residents of her building.
Dasilva wrote that many students in her dormitory were still awake when she left. Even by Sunday night, she wrote, she had been up since Saturday morning. “I don’t think most of the Brown community (had slept), either,” she added.
Dasilva was — and still is — “shaken to (her) core,” she told The Herald, but emphasized the importance of the community taking care of each other.
“I am so proud of the way our community has supported one another through this,” she wrote.
‘They’re like family’: Taking shelter at Jahunger
Alice Xu ’27 was finishing a run at India Point Park and was on her way back to campus when she received a 4:14 p.m. text in a dorm group chat, alerting her to the active shooter on campus.
Having worked as a server at Uyghur restaurant Jahunger this past summer, she “immediately sprinted” to the familiar storefront on Wickenden Street half a mile from Barus and Holley. Xu wrote in a message to The Herald that “people were acting absolutely normal” on the street, despite ambulances, fire trucks and police cars driving past. “I almost thought I was going crazy.”
The Jahunger staff did not yet know about the active shooter, she wrote, adding that she herself did not even know if the news was true until she received the first alert from the University. Then, everyone at the restaurant started getting nervous, she wrote.
Restaurant staff immediately informed customers and locked all the doors, taking people to hide on the second floor and turning off the lights. Xu noted how “strange” it felt to be crying with one of her former coworkers — a Brown student currently on a leave of absence — while feeling like others were less panicked.
Most people left the restaurant by 7 p.m., she wrote — well before the shelter-in-place order was lifted.
But, knowing that Xu wouldn’t be able to return to campus, her manager asked two staff members to stay behind with her. Xu’s former boss also offered to host her at her R.I. house, Xu wrote.
“Most people were still pretty sensitive and tried to comfort us,” she wrote. “It was okay because I knew everyone at Jahunger, and they’re like family. I knew I’d be okay.”
‘Hundreds, even thousands,’ of students at the athletic center
Asa Holcombe ’29 evacuated to the OMAC from the top floor of the Nelson Fitness Center around 8:10 p.m., she wrote in a message to The Herald.
The OMAC felt “safe” and “very secure,” Holcombe wrote — law enforcement was surrounding the perimeter of the building and maintained a presence inside.
Mages reached the OMAC a little before 11 p.m., she said. As she overlooked the indoor track and what she estimated as “hundreds, even thousands” of students, Mages observed a wide range of ways students were coping with what they experienced that night — while some were playing basketball, others were trying to sleep on exercise mats.
Brown Dining Services had brought “lots of snacks and some pizza” earlier, and shortly after 11 p.m., they served catered food including pasta, salad and chicken. Mages “had not eaten anything for 12 hours,” she said. As students waited for food in a line that extended about half the length of the track, those who had reached the front “were sharing bites of what they had gotten,” she said.
By around 1 a.m., Alcantara had also been evacuated to the OMAC. She ate her first full meal of the day around 1:30 a.m, she wrote, having been focused on studying for her exam all day.
Chaudhry also checked into the OMAC around 1 a.m., she wrote.
Chaudry recalled the relief she felt seeing the faces of students she recognized, even if she was not close with them. She remembered thinking, “Oh, thank god, you’re okay.”
Annika Singh is The Herald’s tech chief and a metro editor from Singapore. She covers crime, justice and local politics, but mainly she stands in line for coffee and looks up answers every time she attempts a crossword.
