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U.N.C. Charlotte Shooting: A Student Died Tackling the Gunman ‘Why My Classroom? What Did We Do?’ U.N.C. Charlotte Students Struggle With Shooting on Campus
(about 1 hour later)
Moments after a man opened fire inside a classroom at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a student charged toward the gunman and tackled him, saving many lives but losing his own, the authorities said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In an alert that flashed across computer and phone screens all over campus, the instructions were spare but urgent: “Run, Hide, Fight. Secure yourself immediately.”
Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department told reporters that Riley C. Howell was shot and killed while trying to stop the gunman. “He took the assailant off his feet,” Chief Putney said. “Absolutely, Mr. Howell saved lives.” But Riley Howell could neither run nor hide. The gunman was in his classroom. So, the authorities said, he charged at the gunman, who had already fired several rounds, and pinned him down until police officers arrived.
At the news conference on Wednesday, the chief called Mr. Howell a hero and said that he did exactly what the authorities train people to do. “You are going to run, you are going to hide and shield, or you are going to take your fight to the assailant,” the chief said. “Having no place to run and hide, he did the last.” “But for his work, the assailant may not have been disarmed,” Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department said of Mr. Howell, who was among six victims of a mass shooting at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte campus Tuesday evening. “Unfortunately, he gave his life in the process. But his sacrifice saved lives.”
Chief Putney said Mr. Howell, whom he described as athletic, was probably the second victim to be fatally shot at the scene. Four others were injured. On Wednesday, students and teachers were still reeling from the attack that left two students, including Mr. Howell, dead and four others injured. Chief Putney said the death toll could have been far worse had Mr. Howell, a 21-year-old former high school soccer goalie, not intervened.
“But for his work, the assailant may not have been disarmed,” the chief said. “Unfortunately, he gave his life in the process.” “He is my hero,” said Mr. Howell’s girlfriend of nearly six years, Lauren Westmoreland, who said she was overcome with grief. “But he’s just my angel now, as well.”
Here is what we know — and still don’t know — about the attack. Police identified the gunman as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, and said he had been charged with two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder. The authorities said the handgun used in the shooting had been purchased legally.
The six people who were killed or wounded were all students at the university, officials confirmed on Wednesday. Chief Putney declined to discuss the suspect’s motive and also would not say whether any of the students in the crowded classroom had been targeted. But, he said, the building was familiar, and the choice to focus on it “intentional.”
The university said that the two who were killed were Ellis R. Parlier, 19, of Midland, N.C., and Mr. Howell, 21, of Waynesville, N.C. Students said Mr. Terrell had attended classes at U.N.C. Charlotte, but also said that he appeared to have disappeared from classes in recent months.
Mr. Parlier, who was known as Reed, graduated in 2017 from the Central Academy of Technology and Arts, a magnet high school in Monroe, N.C., where he studied computer technology, according to a spokeswoman for the Union County Public Schools. The attack Tuesday evening was the latest in a string of mass shootings at educational institutions across the country that have left parents, police and school administrators grappling with how to stanch the violence. It came, too, on the heels of a massacre at a California synagogue last weekend and the recent 20th anniversary of the Columbine shootings.
Mr. Howell was an environmental studies student, the chancellor of the university, Philip Dubois, said Wednesday in an interview on WBT radio. Officials of the Buncombe County school district said Mr. Howell graduated from T.C. Roberson High School in Asheville in 2016, and that his mother works at a middle school in the district. The Asheville Citizen-Times reported that Mr. Howell played soccer and ran cross country in high school. The shooting punctured what had been a celebratory graduation week at one of the largest schools in the University of North Carolina system, a leafy, often sun-drenched campus built on old farmland about 10 miles northeast of uptown Charlotte. About 30,000 students attend classes in its red brick buildings.
The university identified the injured students as Sean DeHart, 20, and Drew Pescaro, 19, both of Apex, N.C.; Emily Houpt, 23, of Charlotte; and Rami Alramadhan, 20, of Saihat, Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, the final day of classes, students were looking toward exams and graduation. LBST 2213, a class that examines the anthropology and philosophy of science, was scheduled to meet at 5:30 p.m. in Kennedy Hall.
Mr. Dubois said in the radio interview that three of the injured had had surgery and were expected to recover fully, and that the fourth, who was less seriously injured, had been treated at a hospital and released. Adam Johnson was teaching, and his students were planning to give group presentations. According to a description of the class, the students had spent the semester examining critical philosophical questions, such as: What is science? What is evolution?
Alpha Tau Omega, a leadership fraternity, released a statement identifying Mr. Pescaro as a member of its Lambda Delta chapter. The student newspaper, The Niner Times, said he was a sportswriter for the paper and reported that he was in stable condition after surgery. Miranda Finch, 20 and a sophomore, sat at a large circular table, watching a group presentation about the galaxy. Her group, which had planned to deliver a talk on lobotomies and electric shock, was next.
Waleed Aldhafeeri, president of the Saudi Students Organization at the university, said that Mr. Alramadhan was recovering from wounds to his abdomen and right hand, and was expected to be released soon. He said Mr. Alramadhan was a freshman who had been enrolled in an intensive English language program at the university. Then she heard three loud pops. She said she wasn’t sure what the sound was — she had never before heard a gunshot.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police identified the suspect in the shooting as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22. He was disarmed and taken into custody at the scene late Tuesday. She hadn’t heard anyone come into the classroom, so she wasn’t sure whether the attacker entered quietly or just stood up from the table closest to the door.
Mr. Terrell spent most of his youth in Texas, and moved to North Carolina with his father after his mother died in 2011, his grandfather, Paul Rold, told The Associated Press. But there he was, pointing a gun.
Mr. Rold told the news agency that Mr. Terrell had enrolled in the university at some point and had shown an interest in foreign languages. But it was not immediately clear whether he was still enrolled at the time of the shooting. “I looked at him,” she said, “and the gun was aimed at my table and at me.”
The news agency reported that Mr. Rold said his grandson had never shown an interest in guns or other weapons. Reached on Wednesday morning, Mr. Rold declined to comment further, saying, “You have to understand what my family is going through.” Tristan Field, a 19-year-old sophomore, said the gunman began shooting about 10 minutes into class. It was quiet, he said, until violence broke out and people began to scream and run away.
Public records show that Mr. Terrell registered to vote in North Carolina in December 2014 and cast his ballot early in the 2016 election. The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, whose immediately available records go back three years, indicate that he had not been arrested in the county before Tuesday. Mr. Field said it was the silence beforehand that stood out to him the most on Wednesday. “Only the presentation video was playing, and then suddenly, shots and chaos,” he said.
Sheriff Garry L. McFadden said in text messages on Wednesday that investigators were “going through the files to find answers.” The sheriff, a former homicide detective for the Charlotte police, said there was “no background information that would point to this happening.” One bullet grazed a cheek of Ms. Finch’s friend. Another boy at their table slumped on the floor. Then a bullet hit a third person. Three of the four people wounded in the shooting had been sitting at that table, about 20 feet from the door, Ms. Finch said. They were all in her group, waiting to give their presentation.
The Charlotte Observer quoted Chief Jeff Baker of the university’s Police and Public Safety Department as saying that Mr. Terrell was “not somebody on our radar.” Ms. Finch and her friend crawled behind a table. For a moment, she said, she crouched there, terrified that the gunman would come looking for them.
Mr. Terrell was booked into a local jail early on Wednesday, charged with two counts of murder, four counts of attempted first-degree murder, four counts of assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a firearm on an educational property and discharging a firearm on an educational property. The authorities said at the news conference Wednesday afternoon that Mr. Terrell had legally purchased the handgun used in the attack. Ms. Finch didn’t notice Mr. Howell lunge at the gunman, but she said it could have happened while she was ducking behind the table. The next thing she knew, the gunman was lying on the floor.
The authorities have declined to speculate on the motive for the shooting, which took place on the final day of classes for the university’s spring term. The police said Mr. Terrell did not say anything at the scene when he was taken into custody. “That was the weird thing,” she said. “He just came in and shot, and then he stopped shooting, and then he didn’t say a word at all.”
At the news conference, Chief Putney said Mr. Terrell had “some familiarity” with the building where the shooting took place, and the “choice of that building was by design, was intentional.” Ms. Finch and her friend ran out of the classroom and into a building across the street. Ms. Finch’s friend sat down inside, crying.
“We can’t really discern the why just yet,” he said. “The randomness is what’s most concerning.” “She asked me to look at her hip, and when I looked, it was the first time I had ever seen it, it was definitely a gunshot wound,” Ms. Finch said. She applied pressure until help arrived. And then she went home covered in blood.
As Mr. Terrell, manacled and surrounded by police officers, strode past television cameras and into a police building on Tuesday evening to be booked, he turned and appeared to flash a smile. Mr. Field was also among those who ran away. In a tweet after the ordeal, he tried to process what had happened. “Why here?” he wrote. “Why today? Why U.N.C. Charlotte? Why my classroom? What did we do?”
The shooting occurred in Kennedy Hall, the campus administration building, which also houses the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning. The six people who were killed or wounded were all students at the university, officials confirmed. In addition to Mr. Howell, of Waynesville, N.C., Ellis R. Parlier, 19, of Midland, N.C., also was killed.
Adam P. Johnson, an anthropology lecturer at the university, wrote on Twitter that the shooting happened in a class he was teaching on the role of science and technology in society, which met Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. in Room 236 of Kennedy Hall. Mr. Howell had considered a career in the military or firefighting before enrolling at the university, where he was an environmental studies student. In a statement, his parents said he was a fearless athlete with a sturdy frame who relished a challenge, “whether it be jumping from the highest cliff into the water below or power lifting competitions at the gym.”
The police said the gunman opened fire around 5:40. Mr. Johnson wrote that students were giving team presentations when the shooting began. “Once committed to something,” they said, “he never gave up, never gave in, and gave everything he had.”
“The two killed were in the front,” Mr. Aldhafeeri of the Saudi Students Organization said Mr. Alramadhan told him during a hospital visit on Wednesday. “Rami told me, ‘He just got in the class and tried to shoot people.’ When they tried to get out of the class, he shot them.” Mr. Parlier, who was known as Reed, graduated in 2017 from the Central Academy of Technology and Arts, a magnet high school in Monroe, N.C., where he studied computer technology, according to a spokeswoman for the Union County Public Schools. He aspired to develop video games. In his free time, he tutored Charlotte middle school students.
He said Mr. Alramadhan recognized the gunman as a student who had begun the term enrolled in the class but had dropped it about two months ago. The university identified the injured students as Sean DeHart, 20, and Drew Pescaro, 19, both of Apex, N.C.; Emily Houpt, 23, of Charlotte; and Rami Alramadhan, 20, of Saihat, Saudi Arabia. Three remained hospitalized Wednesday evening.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a public university with an enrollment of about 30,000 students. It is the largest postsecondary educational institution in the Charlotte area. The attack came during a particularly turbulent decade for Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city and a banking hub hit hard by the Great Recession. Over the last 10 years, it has seen a mayor resign over corruption charges, rioting over a police officer’s killing of a black man, and been at the center of a political battle over transgender rights.
The campus was locked down Tuesday night because of the shooting, but the lockdown was lifted by Wednesday morning. Joan F. Lorden, the school’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said at a news conference late Tuesday that final exams scheduled through Sunday had been canceled, and that administrators were still considering plans for after that. In a news conference, the city’s mayor said that over the years, she has heard mayors across the country talk about the impact of mass shootings in their cities. On Wednesday, it was her turn.
The university admits many foreign students, and Mr. Aldhafeeri said there were about 250 Saudi students enrolled this year. Though there were some initial concerns that Mr. Alramadhan might have been targeted for his Muslim faith, Mr. Aldhafeeri said it now appeared that the shootings were random. “We know a tragedy like this can divide a community or bring us together,” said Mayor Vy Lyles, a Democrat. “It is our choice of how we move forward.”
On Wednesday, the university — typically lively and festive — felt “dull and emotionless,” said Devin Chase Martin, 23, a student who had attended a history class with Mr. Terrell but did not know him personally. At an evening vigil, about 7,5000 people, mostly students, packed into Halton Arena, where the 49ers play basketball, to grieve. Gov. Roy Cooper and other state and local officials attended.
Some students, unsure how the attack was unfolding Tuesday, spent hours hiding in classrooms before they realized they were safe. They, too, spent Wednesday recovering.
Philip L. Dubois, the university’s chancellor, said the school would continue with graduation ceremonies that are scheduled to begin this weekend. One of the students who was injured, Ms. Houpt, is among those set to graduate, and Mr. Dubois said she would cross the stage.
But final exams were canceled until Monday morning, he said, adding that the school would be flexible with students who might not be ready to study and take tests.
Before the attack, Wednesday had been set aside as a study day to prepare for exams. Normally, the school’s library and student union would have been “bustling to cram for exams,” said Brooke Davidson, 19. Yet both buildings felt virtually deserted.
“There is a sense of somber — of sadness here,” she said.
Ulani Robinson, 19, a freshman, was still recovering from the three-plus hours she said she spent cowering in a dark classroom with other students on Tuesday.
That night, she said, “we slept only because our bodies made us sleep.”
“I tossed and turned,” she added, “but my mind never rested.”