The shooting Tuesday at a Houston-area community college wasn’t a “school shooter” incident like Newtown or Virginia Tech, but rather the result of an altercation between two men that turned erupted in gunfire. Three people still got shot and injured in the crossfire at Lone Star College’s North Harris campus, and at least one student found the ordeal particularly trying, because she was a survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre.
School authorities haven’t said what caused the argument but police took the men thought to be involved, one of whom had a student ID, into custody. Neither of them were shot or charged with a crime. The three people hit included a maintenance man who was shot in the leg, and two others, one shot in the buttocks and another shot in the knee, the Associated Press reported. A fourth was taken to the hospital for a non-gunshot medical problem, according to The New York Times.
Beyond the injuries, though, the shooting was majorly disruptive and scary. The school of 19,000 people evacuated its campus and closed for the day, and myriad students relayed their terror as they fled for cover or cowered in classrooms. CNN quoted one panicked student: “My heart was pounding. I was praying I wouldn’t hear anymore shots. I was with a bunch of other people running and someone yelled out, ‘don’t push!’ People were crying, I had tears in my eyes.”
One student whose math class had just gotten underway when the shooting broke out collapsed as they waited for the all clear. A classmate who helped her told The Times she had survived the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting — still the deadliest shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history. “She said, ‘I went through this already at Virginia Tech, and I just don’t like this feeling.’” That is very understandable.
