(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Eva Erickson, a doctoral candidate who was the runner-up earlier this year on the CBS reality competition show “Survivor,” said she left her lab in the engineering building 15 minutes before shots rang out.
Erikson had just dodged a shooting during final exams at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others.
She wasn’t the only prominent figure to narrowly miss the attack. Zoe Weissman, who survived the 2018 Parkland High School shooting, was reportedly on campus, too.
“I’m really grateful that I was in my dorm room, that I have food and water in here and access to a bathroom, but a lot of my friends were stuck in academic buildings and didn’t have food for hours,“ she told a Florida NBC affiliate.
Authorities say they have a suspect in custody, but numerous questions remain.
Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said Sunday afternoon that the person in custody was in their 20s and that no one has been charged yet. Perez, who previously said the person was in their 30s and that no one else was being sought, declined to say whether the detained person had any connection to Brown.
The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, firing more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody and authorities also found two loaded 30-round magazines, the official said. One of the firearms was equipped with a laser sight that projects a dot to aid in targeting, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
