Today was one of those day you never want to see happen, let alone be a part of. The first alert came through at 2:11 a.m. saying there was a suspicious death on campus. Then all hell broke loose.
Campus was closed until noon and I was at home monitoring social media, the news and hoping to God it was not one of the students from the area I work in.
The drive in was eerie to say the least since campus is normally bustling. Two helicopters were still circling the area when I pulled up to my building. Then we waited...and waited...
The press conference started around four and all of the details started pouring in. The fact that this suicide was actually meant to be a mass shooting stunned us all. I was standing next to two of our student employees as the news unfolded and seeing the shock on their face was intense.
In that moment I was thankful. Thankful that UCF Police handled the situation the way they did. Thankful only one person was harmed and that he did not harm anyone else.
I was also proud. Proud of the way the UCF community rallied together. Proud of a colleague who made speaking to the media look effortless. Proud of all of my coworkers that came in and attended to business as usual.
It is a scary world that we live in. It is scary that events like this are something we need to be trained to handle and in some cases have to handle.
Now we move on. We continue to be thankful. We continue to be proud. We continue to be Knights.
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1 comment:
I work at a college that is near Northern IL University which had a shooting back in 2008. It's a very scary world we live in.
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