When reports of a shooter spread on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte on Tuesday, the university’s emergency officials blasted out a stark, but increasingly familiar message: “Run, hide, fight.”
Some students reported doing just that. One student, in a study hall at a library, said she and others barricaded the door with a table and stayed quiet, waiting for police. Another hid in a men’s restroom, and a student who was in the classroom where the shooting broke out followed others who fled.
Student Riley Howell, without the option of running or hiding, confronted the suspected gunman, Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, and “took the assailant off his feet,” the Charlotte police chief said. That act saved lives, the chief said, but Howell was killed. In total, two people were killed and four others were wounded in the attack and police have yet to release a motive for the shooting.
