'Mom, I hear gunshots.' Michigan State students live through a second mass shooting

There is a disturbing new class of students who have lived through a school mass shooting: Students who have lived through two. 

As news spread of the mass shooting at Michigan State University on Monday night that killed three and injured five, students began to come forward.

One was at Oxford High in Oxford, Michigan, on Nov. 30, 2021, when a shooter killed four students and injured six other students and a teacher. The school is about 80 miles northeast of the MSU campus in East Lansing.

"14 months ago I had to evacuate from Oxford High School when a fifteen year old opened fire and killed four of my classmates and injured seven more," Emma Riddle posted on Twitter. "Tonight, I am sitting under my desk at Michigan State University, once again texting everyone 'I love you' When will this end?"

Another student said she was locked down in a school near Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, where a shooter killed 20 children and six adults.

Jackie Matthews, now an MSU senior, said in a TikTok video posted at 1 a.m. Tuesday that she was in a building directly across from where some of the shootings occurred at MSU.

"I am 21 years old and this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through," she said.

MSU mom: 'I can't believe this is happening again'

Jennifer Mancini's daughter is a freshman at MSU. She spent her first two high school years at Oxford High before transferring to nearby Lake Orion High School in 2021. Two close friends died in the shooting. On the day of the Oxford shooting, other friends FaceTimed her to ask her to pick them up at the school's meet-up spot. Her mother talked to reporter Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press.

"She said, 'Mom, I hear gunshots … What's going on?'" Mancini told the Free Press just after midnight Monday. She asked that her daughter's name not be used.

Mancini said she thought: "I can't believe this is happening again," 

She said her daughter is friends with other Oxford High students at MSU. They've all had a year of vigils, funerals and news coverage. She worries about the repeat trauma.

"I hope she doesn’t backpedal," Mancini told Baldas. "These kids will never be the same. They’re not the same kids."

Repeat trauma creates hypervigilance

The USA TODAY Network includes the Detroit Free Press and the Lansing State Journal. The school sent an alert at 8:31 p.m. telling students to "run, hide, fight" with a report of shots fired on the school's East Lansing campus. Our first staffers were on scene within 20 minutes.

Since then, more than 70 journalists, from the Michigan newsrooms, USA TODAY and other sites across the country, have coordinated to cover this, yet another mass shooting in America. It's what we do. 

As we do it, we monitor a group chat where journalists share ideas, thoughts and information.

Free Press Education reporter Lily Altavena added this to the chat: "I can't help but think about how for a lot of the kids I interview before going off to college, they treat higher ed as this next monumental step where they'll be safe and they'll put the trauma of whatever happened to them in K-12 behind them."

Last year, she profiled three graduating Oxford seniors. They were still healing from what had happened to them, she said, but also trying to move forward, in ways that held meaning to them.

"One of the students, Lauren Hudson, was headed to MSU," Altavena said. "She was excited. And to me, it seemed like the hopeful ending to what had been a traumatic senior year. And this week, just like she had during the Oxford shooting, she froze and shook while she barricaded herself in a dorm."

Altavena is now working on a story about hypervigilance and how these layers of trauma can create it, a state where your body can’t relax and you flinch at possible threats. Short-term hypervigilance provides a measure of control. Longer term, it can become debilitating.

"On Monday night, Lauren had her boyfriend with her helping her breathe," Altavena said. "She’s been through this before, she wrote me, and she has the resources now to help others, too."

Journalists covered the story as their kids locked down

When we cover these people and these communities, we don't do it as outsiders.

"This is our campus," said Anjanette Delgado, interim editor of the Free Press. "Many of us went to school there. Many of us have kids in school there now, on campus that night, who locked themselves in whatever room they were in."

USA TODAY columnist Suzette Hackney, who was once the editor of the Michigan State student newspaper, wrote about group-texting all night with her alumni friends. "This time, it was my own alma mater," she wrote. "I hate to say it, but none of us can stay untouched by gun violence in America." 

MSU shooting comes as nation remembers Parkland

Candles were lit and prayers said Tuesday as the MSU community gathered to mourn.

At the same time, across the country in Parkland, Florida, candles were lit and prayers were said as that community gathered to mourn.

It has been five years since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 14 students and three faculty members and injured 17 others.

Many of the kids who survived that massacre? They're in college now.

Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY. The Backstory offers insights into our biggest stories of the week. If you'd like to get The Backstory in your inbox, sign up here. Reach Carroll at EIC@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/nicole_carroll. Subscribe to USA TODAY here.