Local students say Ohio State regaining normalcy after attack
Two Laurel Highlands High School graduates attending Ohio State University said things are getting back to some kind of normality after a student attacked people with a car and a knife on Monday.
Will Ulmer of Uniontown is a senior studying architecture.
The 21-year-old Laurel Highlands High School graduate was working late Sunday night and accidentally slept in.
On Monday, he was heading to class from his off-campus residence when he received a text alert on his phone from the university, stating there was an incident and students were advised to stay in shelter and out of public spaces.
“It was scary at first,” Ulmer said. “I didn’t know anything about it.”
Ulmer returned home where he and his two roommates watched and learned about the incident on the news.
Shortly before 10 a.m. Monday, Somali-born student Abdul Razak Ali Artan drove a car up onto a sidewalk and drove it into a group of pedestrians. He then got out and began stabbing people with a butcher knife before he was shot to death by a police officer.
“I’m typically in that area,” Ulmer said. “I normally would have been right in that area if I was on schedule.”
Most of the victims in the attack were hurt by the car, and two had been stabbed, officials said. One had a fractured skull. Four remained hospitalized Tuesday.
Amelia Sikora, 24, of Uniontown is a second-year student with the university’s veterinarian medical program and said she was in class when she and her fellow classmates received the text alert from the university.
Sikora said the text alert stated there was an active shooter on campus, that students should hide and also gave the location of the incident.
Although Sikora said the building that housed her class was located on the other side of the campus, they went on lock down so nobody could enter or leave.
“We were all just really scared,” Sikora said. “We had no idea what was going on. It was scary for the administration and the professors; they didn’t have any idea what was going on.”
Sikora said during the lock down, she and 160 fellow classmates were in the building’s auditorium where a school psychologist was on hand for the students, all of whom were learning about what was unfolding through the alert texts that were sent every 15 minutes.
Ulmer said as more information became available, he went through many different emotions while trying to compose himself.
A little after 11:30 a.m., Sikora said they were allowed to leave the building and were instructed to go home.
Ulmer said by the time 2 p.m. came around, he and his friends felt safe enough to go on campus and continue working on his studies.
“We felt you can’t let this sort of thing stop your life,” Ulmer said. “We kept moving and doing what we’re doing.”
Sikora said she still had work obligations during the rest of her day Monday when she wasn’t returning phone calls and message from back home, asking if she was okay.
Classes were cancelled at the university on Monday, but resumed on Tuesday.
Ulmer said the campus was basically silent as he saw about five people during his normal 15-minute walk, which was odd for a campus of 60,000 people.
When the campus wasn’t silent, it was full of disbelief, said Ulmer.
“You hear about this, but you don’t think it would happen here,” Ulmer said, adding the malicious intent of Artan fueled much of the disbelief. “The fact that he was directly targeting students for no reason–that’s the most shocking part.”
Sikora said it was naive on her part to think that nothing like such an attack would happen at her school in this day and age, she said she was surprised how calm people were during and after the attack.
She said the administration and the police made her feel safe, and she felt a lot of support from the other students.
Through the chaos and the tragedy of the situation, Ulmer said there was some comfort when he started receiving phone calls and messages from back home of people concerned about his well being.
He also was pleased to see how well the university handled the situation by quickly alerting students, preventing them from walking into it.
“I feel like what they did was very effective,” Ulmer said.
Sikora said she and a lot of people are proud the way the university handled the situation and are happy that there were no victim fatalities.
On Tuesday, Ulmer returned to the campus and other than the news crews still in the area, things were somewhat back to the way it was.
“I don’t want to say things are completely different, but they’re not completely normal,” Ulmer said.
For example, during one class, Ulmer said he professor paused for a moment when the class heard a siren going off in the distance, but continued on.
“Probably the thing I’ll take away is even in a bad situation, we can kind of handle these things,” he said. “We learn from them and move forward.”