LAKE MARY, FL -- My father called me at mid-day Monday to let me know "my college is in lockdown." He sounded pretty upset, describing the intense breaking news footage listing them individually: Hartford TV stations WFSB channel 3 and WTIC channel 61; New Britain's WVIT channel 30 and New Haven's WTNH channel 8.
It was if he felt I'd been gone for so long that I would need a rundown of the dial. But my father knows how much CCSU has meant to me in the 27 years since I graduated, how uch I loved being the editor of the college newspaper and and how the experience propelled me into a newspaper reporter career, which of course, has now transitioned to "new media."
He described the situation to me over the phone, "They said something about a man in camofloge with a mask and armor, and a backpack with sword or gun. The whole campus is locked down. The student center, everything."
Here I'm thinking to my self, "Oh my God." So many targets with 12,000 students on the 182-acre campus. I knew every inch of Central. I went to school year-rround to complete a double major in political sciwnce and public administration while working full-time as a dorm janitor during the winter and summer sessions while squeezing in a course here and there.
But in the reality of that surprise phone call from my 75-year-old father so proud of his son, the first on both sides of the family -- to go to college and graduate with high honors, I downplayed my fear as not to get him any more worried or panicked than he was because I, too, didn't want to get upset.
Would the campus I spent five years at year-round and graduated from in 1984, become a bloodbath like Virginia Tech a half dozen years ago? And it wasn't all that long ago that the state I grew up in endured the slaughter elementary school children in Newtown.
I thanked my Dad, who lives about a half hour east of the Central, for the call. I immediately turned to the Google news directories for "New Britain, CT" and a slew of stories popped up, all pretty much saying same thing.
Namely, a vivid description from 20-year-old Jordan Governale, of nearby Farmington, who reported he "walked by a man carrying a backpack with what appeared to be a sword and sheath strapped to his back." He was wearing a mask, camouflage pants, knee pads and a vest resembling body armor, the junior student said. Then in a minute, maybe less, the student witness said he saw campus police police, joined by SWAT units with helmets swarming all over the place.
At that point there was little information I could find inthe online stories in the way of shots fired, stabbings or explosives. There was no reported hostage situation.
Campus cops had gotten the word out quickly to "shelter in place" in what was a full lockdown at mid-day when they received several 9-1-1 calls of a man walking around in camouflage while carrying a handgun or “sword-like weapon.” Then at 3 p.m., the crisis was over. One of three students who fit the earlier description was found huddling inside a residence hall and they were taken into custody without incident, CCSU Police Chief Chris Cervoni said during a late afternoon press conference.
Central President Jack Miller was all too pleased to report no shots were fired and nobody got hurt.
“From a personal standpoint, I can simply say, our prayers were answered,” Miller said. “Everybody was brave and they were calm, and they behaved the way they were asked to behave.”
The campus police chief said at least one of the three young men was a CCSU student, but he didn't elaborate further.
Police were continuing to search for weapons and there were reports that one of the three men in custody -- the one spotted earlier by the junior student, Governale -- may have been wearing a Halloween costume.
Governale explained, "At first I thought it was a Halloween Governale said, but after I saw the cops I thought it was some sort of threat. Then he stated the obvious, which isn't so obvious when it's ground zero: "It's pretty scary. It's pretty strange, unexpected."