Funny text messages pictures

Aight take two of this (hopefully no problems posted this time). Not sure why I’m writing this, can’t tell if i want a reference while everything is relatively fresh or if I just need to get my story out of my head. Catharsis maybe? Halfhearted attempt at healing? Who knows. But here goes I guess. I am verified on another post, and that’s my id at the top. This is my account of that day (Sorry in advance cuz this is gonna be a novel)
At the time of the shooting, I was in my dorm. I lived in the north part of campus, though for anonymity reasons I cannot say which building. MSU north campus is set up so that there are a bunch of dorms on the western side. Moving eastward, there is the union, the medical center, Berkey, the art museum, and then a couple more dorms on the far east side (kinda like bookends). I was in the dorms on one side and some of my close friends lived on the other. For scale, from one set of dorms to the other is about a 10 minute walk (I have a bike so I could do it in two minutes easily). All these buildings are set facing Grand River Avenue, which is basically EL’s main strip. That’s where the target, chipotle, cvs, all the bars, etc are. It was a Monday night, but msu kinda has a party culture, so this area was pretty busy.
I had actually talked to my grandparents at about 3:30 pm ish about going to the Union to “study”. The food court there has insanely good pork nachos, and if I’m being honest, I really just wanted queso. However, I was stressing about midterms and had a shit sleep schedule, so I ended up falling asleep. I tend to have a pattern where I’ll come home, take a giant nap, eat dinner, do homework like real late, and then get like 4 hrs of sleep. If I hadn’t fallen asleep when I did, I would have gone to either the Union or the gym around the exact time everything happened, and i would have more than likely crossed paths with the shooter.
I remember waking up about 15 minutes before the alert first went out. Because of timing and my proximity to it all, it’s not unlikely that I actually woke up to the first volley of shots (I don’t remember this part, only the second volley). I was really groggy and kinda was just sitting in my bed when the alert came in.
Lansing isn’t the safest place, so it wasn’t uncommon to get an email saying “shots reported at the intersection of A and B”. Usually these were from the east side of Lansing, not East Lansing proper. This was different though. The subject was just “Shots fired”. I saved the email, so below is the contents of the first emergency alert:
“MSU Police report shots fired incident occurring on or near the East Lansing campus. Secure-in-Place immediately. Run, Hide, Fight. Run means evacuate away from danger if you can do so safely, Hide means to secure-in-place, and Fight means protect yourself if no other option. Monitor alert.msu.edu for information.”
As I read this email, I began to hear “pop pop pop pop pop”. Looking back, this matches more closely with the Union shots (the second attack). I kinda immediately went into panic mode. I’m an out of state student, so I called my mom. She kinda picked up happily, but when I said “mom I need you to get on the parent fb page, they’re saying shots on campus”, she went into info overdrive mode.
I immediately get out of bed, close the blinds, and turn off the lights. At some point i push my desk in front of my door (I lived on the first floor by an entryway). I kinda had a hard time with this because I couldn’t get it over my rug, but I eventually got it. I grabbed my pepper spray and hid in my closet. My mom was on ft with me and my dad was sitting next to her with the police scanner I sent to him playing.
At that point we start hearing the first responders get to the Union and Berkey. I could hear a shit ton of sirens, and I vividly remember hearing the 911 dispatch call out at least two casualties, one of whom was dead on arrival (pretty sure this was Brian). At this point I was texting my best friend (she went to college about two hours away), a family friend, my ra, a group chat of online friends, and constantly refreshing yikyak. I don’t have Twitter but my best friend does, so I was getting pretty much all the info from everywhere.
I think what usually gets lost here is that we all legit thought this was a terrorist attack on campus. People were running into dorms and screaming. A lot of these dorms are older (especially in north) and have heavy wooden doors. In a crisis, people slamming doors while screaming sounds a lot like gunfire. 911 calls were coming in from all 5200 acres of campus. People were convinced that the shooters were running with Ak-47s along the river (this turned out to be students running and a team of off duty officers). They actually evacuated Akers, which is pretty much as far from the Union as you an really get, because they were so sure the shooter was in the cafeteria. People were knocking on doors pretending to be police, and at one point, there were rumors of explosives being placed around campus.
The scariest part was when the police scanner said that the shooter was in the exact same location as my friends were hiding in. I was convinced for a while that I would never see my friends again.
The lockdown lasted for 4.5 hours. MSU is a huge ass campus, so they called in troopers from around the state and the fbi/swat teams as well. They flew helicopters around (the sound still gives me panic attacks) and systematically cleared every building on campus. There were still reports of single shots, but eventually people started to realize that it was probably over as no one new was getting hurt. There were a couple of funny moments though, the major one being when the 911 dispatch pages an ambulance for a girl experiencing neck pain from a car accident two weeks before (it broke the tension and the irony was great).
Just after midnight, they found the fucker a couple miles off campus. Pretty much right after shooting up the Union, he fucked off to the residential sector of EL. He shot himself as police closed in and was declared dead on scene. At this point I was still in my closet and heard them as they found him / call time of death.
I don’t think i slept that night at all. Once the lockdown was lifted, pretty much everyone who could left campus. I spent the night on the floor of my friend’s room. Around 6 am I went back to my room and packed a bag. We knew classes were gonna be cancelled for at least the next two days, and I knew I sure as hell wasn’t coming back that week. I’m pretty sure I eventually fell asleep around 9 am.
I got picked up by my father around 12 pm. My mom wanted to immediately go get me, but my dad convinced her to wait until morning. At that point I was pretty much the only person I knew that was still on campus. Going outside was the weirdest feeling ever. Campus was dead quiet, and I could see a bunch of yellow police tape. I just remember sobbing in my dad’s arms and telling him “im glad I got to come home”.

Please delete if not allowed but I don’t see anything in the rules so I think it’s fine. But basically the title. I can’t believe it. I messaged and the mod said that I gave “unsolicited criticism of a moderator by inserting myself in a conversation that had nothing to do with me”. He also said that he saw me posting in other subreddits and not responding to his comment (that he literally deleted before I even saw) so that was another factor. 😭 it’s funny bc it’s ridiculous but I actually really liked that sub, moving over here now I guess 💀