Joseph Oduro was leading an economics study session at Brown University on Saturday afternoon when a masked man carrying a rifle burst into his classroom of about 60 students and started shooting.
The session for the Principles of Economics class, scheduled from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in an engineering building on the Brown campus, was nearly over. “I was just teaching my review, like usual,” Mr. Oduro, a 21-year-old senior and teaching assistant, said in an interview.
A little after 4 p.m., he ended the session, which was to be his last time teaching that particular group of students, and said goodbye. “I was telling my students that I am so grateful for them,” he said.
As they stood to leave, he said, “all of a sudden, we heard gunshots and people screaming” in the hall outside.
About three seconds later, he said, a man with a face mask and a rifle entered the classroom and started shooting. The man screamed something that Mr. Oduro said was imperceptible. “That’s what the students and I — and the detectives — have been trying to piece together,” he said.
The classroom is a first-floor lecture hall that has a capacity of 186 and is among the largest in the building, according to Brown University’s website.
Mr. Oduro, who is studying applied mathematics, economics and computer science, described the room as having rows of seats separated by two aisles, similar to stadium seating. He said that the middle row had about 10 seats and that the rows on the sides were smaller, with about three seats each.
He said he hid behind a desk with about 20 other students, and that one was shot in the leg.
About 20 other students ran out of the room’s side doors, he said. The students who were sitting in the middle row had a harder time escaping the gunfire. “The students in the middle were impacted the most,” he said. “Many of them were lying there and they were not moving. I have no idea how many.”
Principles of Economics is an introductory class and prerequisite for a handful of the intermediate economics courses at the university. The teaching assistant said that the class has approximately 475 registered students. More than 80 percent of those students are freshmen.
Saturday’s review session was one of five in total offered before the final exam on Tuesday.
Katherine Rosman covers newsmakers, power players and individuals making an imprint on New York City.
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