Shooting at University of Illinois

By Da Yeon Eom on October 1, 2016

At a crowded party, a girl stumbles and spills a drink on another girl. The girl whose clothes got drenched in alcohol gets upset, and her boyfriend intervenes.

A fight breaks out, and as it gets increasingly rowdy, they step outside to a parking lot to settle their conflict. Shortly afterward, the argument becomes out of control, and it triggers a man to pull out his gun. An unrelated individual gets shot, and numerous others get injured.

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The described scene took place on the campus of the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign, just blocks away from the Main Quad area where students study and just a few steps away from the bars and restaurants that students were packed in during the time of the incident. The previously assured notion of safety within the campus shattered with the gunshots on early Sunday morning of September 25.

As soon as the event occurred, I received text messages from friends who lived a block away from the parking lot. They were preparing to go to sleep when they heard the gunshots and tried to speculate about what could have happened. I was studying at a school facility when a police officer advised the students to remain inside the building until facts were reported. When I finally stepped outside the building, the streets were quiet, and people wasted no time in returning home from their abruptly ended Saturday night bar crawls.

Soon, reports and crime-alert messages endlessly unveiled the incident bits at a time. Even foreign news outlets became interested in what had happened and communicated through contacting the local newspapers. Families and friends of the students checked in on their loved ones to make sure that they were safe. The day after the incident was full of reassurance and solemness that the campus members shared together.

Throughout the week, the students received emails from the local police department about the progress in the investigation. The gunman had fled the scene when the police had arrived, and there were related incidents that had been unresolved at the beginning of the week. A suspect named Robbie M. Patton has turned himself in to the authorities since then, and further investigations are being held for those who engaged in the fight before the shootings.

Although the people involved in the incident were not students at the university, they were community members. Some students who had been present at the incident have been traumatized by the sight of the bloody crime scene, and everyone is forced to face the fear that such crime can happen in our proximity. The incident shook our lives, and it will always be remembered for its fatal sound of gunshots in the otherwise typical Saturday night.

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After the incident, the campus newspaper released an editorial about how the event reminds us that gun violence is not an unfamiliar matter and that it can happen even in the center of our lives. It has happened here in the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign campus, and it can happen everywhere.

However, the event could have just as easily been avoided had it not been for a drunken provocation. The innocent victim has lost his life and the justification that he was at a wrong place at a wrong time is insufficient. It is such a shame that it happened with a single gun held by a person of rash and careless judgment.

The fact that it only takes seconds to take a man’s life and that the killer doesn’t even have to intend to kill the victim is a scary reality. The students of the University of Illinois realized and experienced this fact through that unforgettable Saturday night.

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