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Students' alerts keep them safe
By Amanda Tonoli,
PETER H. MILIKEN AND Kalea Hall
When a man drove a car into pedestrians and began stabbing victims about 9:40 a.m. Monday, Mackenzie Compton was in a nearby Ohio State University building.
Soon after, the daughter of Judge Beth Smith of Mahoning County Domestic Relations Court texted her mother, “I’m OK. I’m inside a building with my class. Please don’t be worried. I love you.”
“What?” replied the judge from her Youngstown chambers.
“There’s an active shooter on campus,” the junior political science major and public policy minor told her mother before it was known the attacker actually wielded a butcher knife.
“Be careful. Love you,” the judge replied.
Tom Compton, father of Mackenzie and husband of the judge, spoke to Mackenzie, a 2014 Cardinal Mooney High School graduate, and called his wife to assure her their daughter was safe on the sprawling Columbus campus that enrolls almost 60,000 students.
That scene played out thousands of times during a chaotic morning as parents everywhere learned – or tried to learn – the fate of their children so far away.
The now-deceased suspect has been identified as a student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan.
Artan was shot to death by a police officer later Monday morning shortly after he drove up onto a curb into pedestrians, got out of the car and began stabbing people with a butcher knife, injuring 11. One was reported to be in critical condition as of press time Monday night.
Artan was born in Somalia and was a legal permanent U.S. resident, according to a U.S. official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The FBI joined the investigation.
Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs, asked at a news conference whether authorities were considering the possibility it was a terrorist act, said: “I think we have to consider that it is.”
Surveillance photos showed Artan in the car by himself just before the attack, but investigators are looking into whether anyone else was involved, the campus police chief said.
At 10 a.m., the university’s emergency management department tweeted, “Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College.” Watts Hall is a materials science and engineering building.
“Run, hide, fight” is standard protocol for active-shooter situations. It means: Run – evacuate if possible; hide – get silently out of view; or fight – as a last resort, take action to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter if your life is in imminent danger.
Allison Popovec, a senior student at OSU studying health sciences, was at home when she received the text alert.
“It’s great that they sent out the texts so quickly,” she said. “I contacted my parents before it was out there [in the national media].”
Popovec, a 2013 Canfield High School graduate, immediately reached out to her roommates and friends to make sure they were OK.
All of them were.
But Popovec realizes how much worse the situation could have been considering the number of students on campus.
“When you have so many kids in one area, it’s scary,” she said. “It’s not something you expect to happen where you are from. You don’t realize it can happen to you.”
Allison’s mother, Eva Popovec, always tells her to be aware of her surroundings.
“You just feel like it will never happen,” Eva said. “It happened. It’s here. Now my daughter is in her house with all friends just waiting for news.”
Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel, once head football coach at OSU, relayed the YSU community’s thoughts to students and staff in Columbus.
“We pray for the victims and their families and offer our support to all Buckeyes,” he said.
YSU Police Chief Shawn Varso said most officers are specifically trained for crises. YSU campus police are specifically trained with ALICE – Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.
In short, Varso said, “It’s to inform our students faculty and staff about how to handle an active shooter.”
Other lessons ALICE teaches are how to get and stay away from a violent intruder by way of a designated shelter, as well as using the fight in the fight-or-flight mechanism as only a last resort.
Varso said ALICE training is about giving students options.
“Usually in a situation like [OSU’s], a person has a stress reaction and a narrow focus – like tunnel vision – and it’s the fight-or-flight mechanism and people are going to go with whatever they’re used to doing,” Varso said. “This tells them, ‘You do have a chance. You have that option to save your own life if you have to.’”
In addition, YSU has a fast communication system that is the same OSU has – text alerts.
Mackenzie later told a reporter she was in an introduction to public affairs class in Page Hall on the South Oval at OSU, which is a 5- to 10-minute walk from Watts Hall. The “Buckeye Alert” message appeared on the PowerPoint screen used for lectures, followed five minutes later by a text blast on the students’ cellphones.
She then went upstairs from the ground-floor classroom near the building’s entry doors to a third-floor conference room with her classmates as directed by their professor.
“The entire campus went on lockdown,” she said. “There was a heavy police presence all over campus.”
Mackenzie left the campus building at 11:30 a.m. to go to her downtown Columbus workplace, where she is an intern in the office of state Sen. Joseph Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd.
“I felt very safe through the whole ordeal. Ohio State’s a very large campus. It [the incident] was a significant distance from me, and I knew that we were very well protected,” she said.
Leaders of Muslim organizations and mosques in the Columbus area condemned the attacks while cautioning people against jumping to conclusions or blaming a religion or an ethnicity.
“It is particularly heartbreaking to see this random act of violence come to this community I hold so dear,” said Nicole Ghazi, who is active in Islamic organizations and is an Ohio State graduate.
Contributors: Associated Press