A Michigan State University professor has recalled the moment a masked gunman entered his class and opened fire, killing two of his students and injuring several others on Monday.
Marco Díaz-Muñoz told CNN he was halfway through a Cuban literature class on Monday night when he recalled seeing “this figure” enter a rear doorway at a room in Berkey Hall on the East Lansing campus.
The assistant professor told the network the gunman was “totally masked”, and he couldn’t see his hands or face.
“It was like seeing a robot,” he said.
One of the students cried out that it was “a shooter”, but the gunman said nothing.
He told the New York Times that the students’ shooting drills immediately kicked in; some dived under desks and others ran towards another exit. But Mr Díaz-Muñoz said he was in too much shock to understand what was happening and froze.
The gunman, later identified as Anthony McRae, then fired at least 15 shots into the classroom, killing Arielle Anderson, 19, and 20-year-old Alexandria Verner, and wounding five others, according to authorities.
The gunman then stepped back into the hallway and walked towards the front of the class and tried to enter another door.
The professor told how he “threw himself at that door” with the full weight of his body and grasped the handle, while shouting at his students to kick out windows and try to escape.
Some managed to break through the higher window panes of the ground flloor classroom and get out to safety. Others stayed to try to help the wounded, using their hands to staunch the blood, he told the network.
Mr Díaz-Muñoz said he stayed pressed against the door for what seems like an eternity — he estimates it was 10 to 12 minutes — until police arrived.
He then went to check on the students; some were crouching under desks, another said he was having an asthma attack and couldn’t breathe.
“There was a horrendous scene. I’ve never seen so much blood,” he told CNN.
Police and paramedics cleared the room shortly afterwards.
He was later told that Anderson and Verner had died, and he believes the other five students who suffered critical injuries were his students.
Authorities say that room 114 in Berkey Hall was the gunman’s first target, in what was the 67th mass shooting in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
McRae then went to the MSU student union building where he shot and killed sophomore Brian Fraser before killing himself hours later when cornered by police.
Mr Díaz-Muñoz told CNN how he had been a graduate student at MSU before coming back to teach 15 years ago, and he had always requested room 114 for his classes.
After Monday night’s shooting, he can’t get the images of blood, injury and death out of his mind.
“I don’t know how to explain to you the guilt, the horror, the guilt, the pain that I felt, and I still feel,” he said.
