EAST LANSING, Mich. — A second Michigan State University survivor is saying the Feb. 13 mass shooting put her "face to face" with "one of my biggest fears" — "experiencing a school shooting."
Guadalupe Huapilla-Pérez, a hospitality business junior at MSU and a student in the university's College Assistance Migrant Program, was one of five students who was critically injured and hospitalized and the first to be publicly identified when her sister, Selena, posted a GoFundMe fundraiser to help raise money for her family's expenses.
"I remember the sound of the first bullet shot," Huapilla-Pérez wrote in a March 23 Facebook post, adding that some memories of that night are "very clear" while others are blurred.
"I don't remember exactly when I got shot but I remember a classmate holding their shirt to my abdomen area," said Huapilla-Pérez, who started her post by writing in Spanish that, first, she thanked God. "I can't remember the pain of my wounds but I can remember the pain I felt in my heart seeing this horrible tragedy unfold before me."
Troy Forbush, another shooting survivor who first shared his story at a Thursday March for Our Lives antigun rally at the Michigan Capitol, also reported that a fellow student applied pressure to his gunshot wounds.
Like Forbush, Huapilla-Pérez said she called her mother after she got shot, "afraid, so afraid that that would be the last time I talked to her. For her, a call she never expected but always feared receiving."
It remains unclear whether she was shot at Berkey Hall or the MSU Union.
Speaking before hundreds of people at the Capitol on Thursday, Forbush recalled falling to the ground in front of his seat inside his Berkey Hall classroom, then trying to act dead as the accused shooter, Anthony McRae, 43, of Lansing, drew closer.
"As he panned the room with his handgun, I pled for my life and screamed, 'Please don't shoot me.' We were met face to face with pure evil," said Forbush, a double major in music education and vocal performance.
Forbush focused on calling the paramedics "lifesavers." While expressing gratitude, Huapilla-Pérez reported feeling a "deep sense of loneliness and fear" on her ambulance ride to the hospital, a five-minute ride that she said felt like it took 20 minutes.
Huapilla-Pérez said she was released from Sparrow Hospital on March 13, exactly a month after the shooting, and will require multiple follow-up surgeries as she recovers from her injuries. Sister Selena said previously she "faces "months of care and subsequent rehabilitation." The university is paying the medical bills of the survivors.
The injuries are severe enough that she is remaining in East Lansing to recover for now even though she would prefer to return home to Florida, she wrote on Facebook.
"My medical team and family felt I was not yet in a state to travel home to Florida but I hold out hope for the day I can go home and continue my recovery in the comfort and safety of my family home," she said.
"There are challenging months ahead of me, as my wounds require follow up surgeries, making me relive that pain and that moment once again," Huapilla-Pérez said, adding that her family from southwest Florida has been by her side during her recovery, including her nieces, nephews and her dog.
She said "a day doesn't go by that I don't mourn the loss" of Arielle Anderson, Alexandria Verner and Brian Fraser, the three Metro Detroit students who were killed.
"I didn't know them closely but it is a painful feeling to live with knowing I shared their last moments with them," Huapilla-Pérez wrote, adding in Spanish, "Rest in peace."
The business student asked that people respect her and her family's privacy as she continues her recovery.
"Being out of the hospital feels so vulnerable and I still struggle with feeling safe," Huapilla-Pérez wrote, ending with the sign-off "Forever Spartan Strong."
