In Providence, Rhode Island, police are searching for the gunman who killed two students in a classroom at Brown University on Saturday. They had detained a man described as a person of interest but then released him late Sunday night.
Ref Bari, a physics graduate student, was inside Brown’s Barus & Holley building when the shooting started.
“I was walking down the staircase to the main commons area of the building, and that’s when I heard the first ring of shots like ‘pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,’” Bari said. “And it felt like it was right behind me.”
Bari fled the building, warning other students about the active shooter along the way. He then hid in another student’s bathroom for two hours.
3 questions with Ref Bari
Did you know what the ‘pop’ sound was at first?
“No, no, no. God no. In fact, the last thing on my mind was gunshots. I thought it was maybe construction. Nothing could have pointed it to gunshots because when I glanced behind me, the lobby was empty. So, I thought, ‘OK, clearly if I heard something behind me, then there’s nothing behind me. I don’t want to freak out.’”
Then you heard it again and started running. You said a lot of the other students and people in the area seemed oblivious because they were wearing headphones.
“There’s about 100 students studying in the commons area. So, during the first ring of gunshots, people start to take out their headphones and start to stop what they’re doing. Just like I was, they’re first confused. But the second ring of gunshots is what does it. It’s almost like silence in the commons area, but people just start running for the exits.
“When I made it to the other side of the street, people from the science library were coming out. It was just another Saturday, like they had no idea what was going on, just literally next door.
“So, I started shouting, ‘Active shooter! Active shooter! Run!’ and I just kept running down the street. I was just trying to get as far as I could. And we always used to do shelter drills, shooter drills. There’s no textbook situation for this, right? It’s like, you’re walking down a staircase, and you hear gunshots behind you, what do you do? There’s 100 people in front of you, you can’t go there.”
Can you explain how it feels today knowing that there was a person of interest and then they’ve been released? The shooter is still at large.
“It’s just so much anxiety and fear in the community, right?
“But in those hours that I was in the bathroom with, it was four of us stuck in like a four-by-four space, sitting on the floor of the bathroom. And there were rumors that the shooter was out on the street, like feet from us, and it was so terrifying because I called 911 in the bathroom, and I said, ‘There were gunshots behind me, officer,’ and the officer said that, ‘At this time, we don’t know how many active shooters there are. Please stay under shelter.’
“And it’s just this feeling of helplessness, right? There’s no Superman, who’s going to save the day. It’s you and your friends. There’s this thing called survivor’s guilt. All of that stuff is going through my head right now, like five feet behind me is this individual walking into a classroom. If I had like 60 seconds of warning, I could have run into the classroom and just yelled something. It’s this feeling that, if I had any idea, I could have done something.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Lynn Menegon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Michael Scotto. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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