A Nightmare That I Never Saw Coming

5:35 PM - Nicholson Pavilion

It is about 5:35 p.m. on Wednesday, February 2019. I just got done shooting my fifth and final free throw for the night of basketball practice, when all of a sudden I hear my coach screaming “get into the locker room right now, sprint girls!” I hesitate in confusion. Why is she yelling at us to run into the locker room? Are we in trouble?

Then I saw her face. We were not in trouble. Something terrible was happening.

As I stumbled into the locker room with all my teammates along with our two assistants and three practice players, our coach proceeds to tell us there has been an alert of an active shooter on campus down in Lind Hall. My heart dropped. This was my absolute worst nightmare.

We have all heard of various shootings that have tragically happened more often the past couple years but you would never expect this kind of thing to happen in little old Ellensburg, Washington. You don’t think these kinds of experiences would ever happen to you, until they do.

5:40 PM - Locker Room

I immediately texted my sister and cousin, who both go to Central as well, if they were safe and off campus. My sister was thankfully at home but my cousin was stuck in the SURC. This did not sit well with me as the SURC is only two buildings away from Lind Hall.

My cousin texted me back and he said he was upstairs in the SURC locked in a room with other students and that he was safe.

All I could do at this point is pray and take a deep breath. I am behind two locked doors surrounded by concrete walls. I will be okay, my cousin will be okay, everything will be okay.

6:00 PM - Locker Room

You can probably already imagine the kind of things people were posting on social media, specifically Twitter. The tweets first started with people saying, “There has been alerts of an active shooter on campus get out of there as soon as possible” or “Praying for those on the campus of CWU.” Very harmless things at first.

Then people began to panic.

“Students heard on police scanner two victims are being airlifted”, “Two active shooters at CWU in Ellensburg”, “Hostage situation in Lind Hall”. It was endless the number of tweets that were rolling in.

People even began tweeting that this could possibly be a hoax and whoever called this in was seeing how the police reacted to the situation to strategically plan an actual shooting.

6:30 PM - Locker Room

As I was sitting there on the locker room floor, reading all of this, while listening to the police scanner with the live updates, I am thinking the gunman is making his way through every building on campus. There were calls saying people heard shots from Lind Hall all the way up to the L&L building. That building is very close to the Pavilion.

The tweets of people freaking out and tweeting unnecessary things did not help. This tweet was the one that got to me the most, “Just heard on police scanner 6 shots fired in the PAV”. I was frightened because the scanner had just reported shots around L&L. I thought to myself this was really happening and he was here.

I looked to my teammates for comfort, but as I looked around the room I saw scared eyes, girls crying and some panicking in fear. I took another deep breath and prayed.

7:10 PM - Locker Room

Central was now trending on Twitter within the hour of the shutdown because of how many people were tweeting about it. On the CWU Police & Parking Twitter, one tweet got over 1,000 likes and retweets just within the lock down time frame.

At this point, the tweeting was absolutely out of control and I needed to put my phone down before I had a literal panic attack.

I looked to my coach for clarity and she just looked at us and kept saying, “We can’t believe everything we are hearing right now on social media. People freak out in these types of situations, which they have a right to, but we have to remain calm and wait till we know more about what's truly going on out there.”

She was the reason I staying so calm during this whole time.

7:27 PM - Released

Come to find out, roughly two hours later we were let out of the locker room as the report was a false alarm. Thankfully it was, but the whole thing felt brutally real.

As I was walking out of Nicholson Pavilion I couldn’t help but run to my car afraid that someone might come after me. It was a very scary feeling that I won’t ever forget.

Social media made me over think everything way more than I should have and I wish that people wouldn’t have started making so many rumors up because it only made things worse for everyone. The rumors caused a lot of drama and unnecessary arguments at a time where we should have all been coming together.

8:00 PM - Home Safely

I’m beyond grateful everyone was okay and it was a false alarm, but for two hours on lock down not knowing what was going on outside and because of social media, I thought my life was in great danger.

This just goes to show you cannot believe everything you hear on social media, especially during times like this one.

Once I got into bed, I thought about the whole night over and over in my head. I wish that I had never even looked at Twitter while I was in that locker room.