As information spreads on the UNC Charlotte shooting, so does shock and sadness

At 12:36 p.m. Friday, students at Charlotte’s Queen’s University received emergency phone calls and text messages after a man with a gun was reported in the Levine Center. Students were on lockdown until officials determined he was an off-duty CMPD officer. Within 10 minutes, students and faculty received an “all clear” message.

At 5:42 p.m. Tuesday, students from UNC Charlotte received a similar emergency message. This time, fears proved true as 22-year-old Trystan Andrew Terrell fired shots during a group presentation in an anthropology class in Kennedy Hall. He killed two students and wounded four others. Now a community of students, staff, alumni and residents grapple as tragedy hits home.

Misha Lazarra, a graduate teaching assistant in the MFA program, heard the news just after returning home with her 1-year-old daughter from dropping off forms for her students to sign.

“The school sends Niner Alerts for weather, mostly,” Lazarra said. “And obviously I’ve never gotten one like this, so I ignored it.”

She didn’t realize what was happening until a colleague who works in the library sent a group message. “By that point, the alerts from UNCC started coming in rapidly, and other friends were posting about hiding in their locked offices and under desks.”

Jamie Killian, a 2007 English graduate who earned a graduate certificate in education in 2013, recently returned to her alma mater to recruit students for her company, PlatinumSitters.

Fellow graduate and colleague Jennifer McClamb was the first to message Killian about the attacks. “I was surprised how instant and visceral my reaction to seeing my school’s name on the news was. I guess this speaks to how frequently we see this sort of thing. It’s always tragic, but we do become somewhat numb — until its personal,” Killian said.

Killian remained glued to social media and text messages as updated information flooded in. Lazarra waited nervously as she received emails and alerts, and the seriousness of the news began to sink in.

“When the news came out that two were killed and four were injured, I was stunned,” Lazarra said. “These were young students like mine. But then I realized, while I want all my own students to be safe, other students are not. They’ve been killed. It’s heart wrenching.”

Lazarra began reaching out to her students.

“Many were thankful for just that,” she said. “A few shared where they were, some what they saw or didn’t, and what they experienced.

“Processing is one thing. With showing support, I don’t even know where to start. It’s easy to get political and to say that beyond support, I want action. But I wanted that a long time ago, long before this tragedy happened where I study and work. UNCC was already a gun-free campus. That didn’t stop this shooter from getting a gun and killing his classmates.”

Queen’s University MFA student and UNC Charlotte alum Sarah Hosseini lives in New Delhi, India, and received the news early Wednesday morning.

“I initially thought, ‘This is so sad and awful for the victims and their families. They deserved to live. They deserved to live in a society where their lives were protected. They deserved to live, and be relieved on their last day of school,’” Hosseini said.

“Shootings in the US happen so frequently it feels like a collective trauma at this point. It is obvious now, that no one in the United States can learn, worship, or be entertained in their communities without the threat of gun violence hanging over their heads. The threat of gun violence is in our bones and our psyches,” she said.

Hosseini noted that in New Delhi, gun laws are quite restrictive. “There isn’t a mall, movie theatre, place of worship, or school I don’t enter without going through a metal detector first and a pat down,”

Hosseini returns to the United States this month for her masters program and is apprehensive. She even searched Google about hiring a private security officer. “This is our environment now, our culture; we must find ways to survive and save ourselves.”

Lazarra said, “I wanted to respond about the shock of it all with, ‘It’s so hard to believe.’ But it’s not. I thought about this scenario while on campus instructing because it’s the sad reality we live in.”

This story was originally published May 1, 2019 at 12:54 PM with the headline "As information spreads on the UNC Charlotte shooting, so does shock and sadness."