Eva Erickson, a doctoral candidate at Brown University and runner-up on season 48 of Survivor, has revealed she narrowly avoided a deadly shooting on campus Saturday afternoon. A shooter dressed in black killed two people and injured nine others at the Ivy League school, with the attack occurring at the Barus & Holley Engineering building.
Erickson, 25, shared on Instagram that she left her lab just 15 minutes before the active shooter alert was issued. In a video posted during lockdown at the university's athletic centre, she explained that a spontaneous decision to go to the gym—something she never does in the afternoon—led her to exit the building within five minutes of the shooter entering.
“I randomly decided I would go to the gym,” Erickson said. “I was leaving the building within five minutes of the shooter coming in.” She left around 4 p.m., while the shooting reportedly began at 4:05 p.m. Brown University issued an emergency alert at 4:22 p.m.
Erickson and other PhD students were released from lockdown around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, with undergraduates following at 2:30 a.m. She described the campus atmosphere as eerie, with many students fleeing to be with family. “Everybody is leaving,” she said. “Everyone is trying to get the hell away from Brown to get home to their families, where they can feel safe.”
As she prepared to leave campus, Erickson drove past her boarded-off office building, which was surrounded by crime scene tape and police. She captioned her post: “I, just like everyone else at Brown, am processing a lot of emotions... This can’t keep happening to our students.”
As of Monday morning, the shooter remains at large. A person of interest initially taken into custody was released less than 24 hours after the incident.
