That CNN is giving few details indicates to me that this is a very bad situation.
Likewise NPR. As of 24 minutes ago, it was still an active situation.
Just listened to a news conference.
2 confirmed dead/8 others critical.
No suspect in custody yet.
All they have according to updates is the suspect is a male wearing all black. Not a lot to go on. Shooter remains at large.
This seems odd: usually if there are 8 in critical condition one would expect a dozen or so with minor injuries. But there are none with minor injuries. ???
I agree.
It seems like they are keeping a tight hold on the information possibly until they apprehend the shooter?
More likely they haven’t bothered wasting valuable transport moving the slightly injured to a hospital while they still think they might get more severely injured folks any moment now.
Yep. Smart triage if it multi-injury is the case.
Early hours. There will be more.
A few updates:
Eight patients from the shooting were being treated at Rhode Island Hospital, a spokeswoman said. Six were in critical but stable condition, one was in critical condition, and another was in stable condition, she said… a ninth injured victim has been identified. That person has non-life-threatening injuries from “fragments” related to the gunfire.
The shooting happened during a final exam review session in a Principles of Economics class, according to the class’s professor, Rachel Friedberg. She did not immediately respond to a message seeking more information.
The mayor said more than 400 law enforcement officers were in the area helping with the investigation and with keeping the area safe.
Deputy Chief O’Hara said “we’ve had some tips” about the gunman, but “none of them have worked out for us yet.” He said investigators have “a little bit better” idea about the suspect than they did a couple of hours ago, “but we’re still not there yet.” The deputy Providence police chief said the shooting took place inside a classroom on the engineering building’s first floor. No weapon has been recovered, he said. The gunman “could be in his 30s, but we’re not positive,” he added.
How minor can a gunshot wound be? I mean, sure, someone could be barely nicked. But isn’t it more common to be somewhat seriously injured?
Also, an economics class review? What an odd attack scene.
People could also suffer other injuries even if a bullet went nowhere near them, from falling on ice, being trampled, falling down stairs they didn’t see in their haste to escape, etc.
I just hope that whoever did this gets caught quickly.
I don’t know what the current conditions hospitals use for patients, but surely there are less serious conditions than critical.
I mean, not to bring politics into this, but an example immediately comes to mind.
Only 2, officially: Critical, and Stable.
If this comment is aimed at this bit from @PastTense’s cited article:
There are lots of ways for bullets to hit something, break it, and pieces of it go flying hard enough to hurt somebody , but not much. Flying chunks of wood, glass, sharp plastic, etc. Bullets themselves often break up and what’s left has energy, but not the kind of energy needed to create deep wounds.
IMO broadly speaking there are three possibilities here:
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The shooter was just looking for any classroom containing plenty of people, and walked in on that one, not the one down the hall. Either way we’d be scratching our heads about “Why that topic?” when it isn’t relevant to the shooter’s decision. That may simply have been the largest room on that floor of that building, and hence the juiciest target. Which just moves the question to “Why that floor?” & “Why that building?” Perhaps ease of access and ease of escape for the shooter? Perhaps purely random.
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There were some person(s) in there the shooter wanted to target. The prof, a jilted lover, a love rival, a sibling, several members of some frat, … The list goes on.
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And then we get to the really wacky ideas like “I’m going to shoot up an economics class because that’s a class all the Jews take.” Sadly in this world, it’s never hard to find racism or antisemitism as a motivator for violence. Folks who get riled up by that flavor of propaganda seem especially prone to violence. And of course there’s plenty of propaganda on those topics actively cheerleading for vigilante violence.
Horrible to open the papers this morning. The Australian shooting too.
From the article I cited above which has continuing updates:
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… 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… 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.
No, i understand that it’s possible to get a minor wound from a gunshot. I even mentioned that it’s possible to be nicked by a passing bullet. I’m just questioning why
Is an expectation that the next several posters seemed to agree with. It seems unremarkable to me that most of those shot have major injuries.
(And if some students got scratches trying to duck under furniture, or whatever, those presumably didn’t require medical treatment and weren’t even counted. Those students just walked away when the situation allowed it.)
Good news!
That is good news.
This is heartbreaking.