At a snow-swept outdoor vigil Sunday night for the victims of the Brown University shooting, the mayor of Providence edged sideways through the crowd, clapping people on the shoulder and getting clapped right back, looking more like a favorite nephew at a family gathering.
The shooting on Saturday, which killed two students at the Ivy League school and injured nine, brought a rare national spotlight to Providence, a place that operates almost like a city-state in the tiny and quirky state of Rhode Island.
It also thrust Brett Smiley, a low-key mayor with a reputation as technocratic, into a high-profile role as the community’s steadying hand in a turbulent crisis. At televised news conferences, Mr. Smiley has seemed determined to deliver what he calls verified information mixed with empathy for his shaken residents.
“I think my job in the days to come is to help our community heal, to process the trauma that they’ve been through,” said Mr. Smiley, a trim, bespectacled 46-year-old who has held the job for three years.
Rhode Island has not experienced such a high-profile national news story for more than two decades, not since indoor fireworks ignited a blaze in West Warwick at the Station nightclub in 2003, killing 100 people at a rock concert. Since the fire, Rhode Islanders have often spoken about the “two degrees of separation” among residents of this compact and tight-knit state — many people personally knew someone who was affected.
“We always thought we were, in Rhode Island, just like a small place,” Mr. Smiley said in an interview on Sunday. “We always thought of ourselves as a little bit different.”
A large-scale school shooting, he added, “has never happened before, and I’m sure we all hoped — I know I hoped — it never would happen here. And so it’s very upsetting and traumatic for this community.”
Brown University draws students from around the country and the world, to a campus blended into Providence’s East Side neighborhood.
Among the several hundred attendees at Sunday’s vigil, John Speredakos, 63, of New York City, stood on a park bench to get a better view of the ceremony. He was there because he has a daughter who was a senior at Brown.
He said he had watched updates on the crisis closely. He praised the city’s initial response to the attack, and the 12-hour manhunt for the shooter that followed.
“I felt they were dealing as best they could on many fronts at one time,” he said of the city’s leaders.
Mr. Smiley, a graduate of DePaul University, lives on Hope Street, just three buildings away from where the shooting took place. The area is in the affluent and liberal East Side.
The mayor said he was home on Saturday watching a Providence College basketball game on TV, when speeding police lights outside his window caught his eye. His phone rang almost at that moment.
It was a Providence police official, who told him there was a report of a shooter on campus. “At that moment, honestly, I slipped into, just sort of action mode,” he said.
Mr. Smiley was experienced in Rhode Island politics long before becoming mayor, working for the former Providence mayors David Cicilline and Jorge Elorza, and then for former Governor Gina Raimondo.
“There’s no way to really be prepared for a day like today, but I’ve seen leaders in times of crisis,” he said.
During the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the administration of Ms. Raimondo, for whom he worked at the time, “communicated relentlessly” with the public, he said.
“There’s very legitimate and understandable fear and anxiety in the community, and the way in which we can help manage that fear and anxiety is to continue to provide information,” Mr. Smiley said.
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