The Umpqua community College Shooting Incident · 8:32pm Oct 7th, 2015
This was written two days after the incident
Hey guys, Kablam Pony here again with another post. As most of you have heard by now when I post this, there was a shooting incident at the community college in Roseburg, Oregon with several deaths and critically wounded people. As of right now, this shooting is rivaling the death statistics of the columbine shooting almost 16 years ago.
Now, I have mentioned in previous posts that I am enrolled in the government program called ‘Job Corps’ and am a part of the automotive program that they offer. However, the center that I am at uses the Umpqua community college for their automotive and nursing assistant careers; which is the same college where the shooting happened and I was there when it did happen.
I don’t want to worry everyone because I am doing just fine. I wasn’t near where the shooting took place. I was in the automotive shop near the back of the campus inside one of the class rooms when we were finally told of what was happening. In fact, I and five of my auto-buddies (who are also part of Job Corps) were so far away that we could not here the gun shots at all. Maybe it was because of how thick the walls were, or we were being too loud to have noticed, or I was too focused on my work; I can’t be sure.
But when people started filing in telling us there was a shooter… I’m not sure if I just brushed it off or what, but I kind of just continued with my work. They went through the whole process of locking all the doors and such, but there was a problem with locking all of them so we were forced to move to the welding shop next door. So we had to drop everything and move to welding. I sort of went into that mode of where you spend no time what so ever goofing off or playing around and became very focused on my tasks.
The six of us (the Job Corps people) stuck together for almost the entire thing. While everyone else was talking, I shut up and was listening. We had one moment where everything got really quiet when we thought we heard something from the door, and again when the police finally got around to clearing our building. I’ll be honest, when the door was finally cracked open I was moments away from kicking that door closed if it wasn’t the police on the other side. I had told myself, ‘If it wasn’t the police on the other side, the door was going to be slammed closed and boot jammed until the police arrived’.
I was sort of at that moment where I had told myself that no matter what happened, I was going to fight to survive; whether it was taking cover, attacking the shooter, or taking a bullet, I was going to leave campus alive.
I don’t want you to think that I was being heroic. Honestly, I was only thinking of myself getting out alive first before I helped anyone else, which I would if need be. But I came first.
When we were finally able to leave the shop we were escorted out and pat down for any more weapons before being evacuated to a fair grounds not too far away. The entire time between being escorted out and getting on the buses, we were getting updates from everyone else in the Job Corps program about how they were doing and letting each other know who was with who.
Everyone was eventually accounted for and with no injuries too. Although, while we were waiting for everyone to arrive at the fair grounds and regroup I discovered that four of our people were close to the shooting in the library; one guy was outside in one of the smoke shacks and was about 30 yards away when he heard the gun shots. And from my understanding, he helped two girls get to cover in the library and got someone to call the police and collected the rest of auto students in the library and made them aware of the situation before they all got ushered into a back room.
A lot of people were shaky during the whole thing and several people broke down crying. It’s a small community so pretty much everyone almost knew everyone else. I didn’t really have that kind of tie here so, not to sound callous or anything but, it didn’t really affect me that much; maybe the shock hasn’t really set in yet.
Anyways on the bus ride back to center, everyone was talking. The only bit I can remember from our conversations on the way back was me saying I was going to fight to survive. It didn’t matter if that meant taking cover, taking out the shooter myself, or taking a shot; I was going to get out alive. I wouldn’t let myself die.
I told them that I couldn’t die just yet; I had too many goals in life and dreams I wanted to make a reality to do before I could leave just yet. One of those dreams is to finish writing ‘The Games We are Forced to Play’ along with all the mini-stories along with it.
But I have other goals as well that I haven’t quite completed yet so I figured to myself that this is not my time to go yet.
Like I said before, don’t think of me being heroic. I’m just telling you my experience from the whole ordeal. The real heroes here would be the police force with they’re quick response to the scene before even more people got hurt. And my condolences go out to all the families with lost loved ones.
The funny thing about all this is the main thing I’m kind of concerned about is my homework and wondering how am I going to finish some of my lab work without being able to get to shop to do it. Plus, all my stuff is still in that class room including my electronics and music. Oh how I miss my music!
I know, pretty selfish of me to be concerned about the more mundane things about my life then the shooting happening right outside our door. But, I kind of just see this as a bump in the road of life; a really big bump that would be enough to throw some things around if you aren’t careful. Yeah, this sucks and I sort of feel sorry for them but I’m also glad that it wasn’t me. I didn’t really have any deep personal connections with any of them so it didn’t really matter to me. If it was one of my auto-buddies, then yeah, I would be upset and sad.
Call me a cold-hearted bastard, I know. But I’m a cold-hearted bastard you can trust, is still willing to help, and will give it to you straight.
Alright, enough with this self-bashing. I’ll let you decide how to interpret this and make your own conclusions. Hopefully, everyone can make a full recovery from this tragedy and move forward in life. I wish you all luck.
I will see you all in the next chapter.
Edit: I will probably do an update on how I feel about the shooting after a week has gone by and we’ll see how I feel then.
