Wounded Brown Student Helped Another Shooting Victim

An 18-year-old Brown University freshman recovering in a Providence hospital is offering one of the first detailed accounts from inside the classroom where a campus shooting unfolded during an exam review session Saturday, killing two and injuring nine. Speaking from his hospital bed, Spencer Yang tells the New York Times he was shot in the leg and then focused on trying to keep a more severely wounded classmate awake as they sheltered behind seats in the auditorium-style room. "To keep him conscious, I just started talking to him, so he didn't close his eyes and fall asleep," Yang recalled, adding that he handed the student his water as the classmate struggled to respond. Yang said the other student is now in stable condition.

The gunman entered from the back of the lecture hall just as the review session was winding down, the Washington Post reports. The man, dressed all in black, completely covered except his eyes and part of a hand, and carrying "the longest gun" one witness said he'd ever seen, first shouted something unintelligible before opening fire, the witness tells ABC News. As shots rang out, students bolted down the sloped room toward the front, where instructors normally stand. Yang said he didn't make it all the way and instead dropped between seats as "chaos" erupted. Those who were hit hardest, he said, were the ones like him who did not reach the front. Another person who was at the session recalls falling multiple times as she ran for the door, and helping up a fellow student who was getting trampled. After the gunfire stopped, there was a brief quiet before "a bunch of people started screaming," Yang says.

Yang, a New York City native and graduate of the Dalton School, managed to call his parents, pull himself into a chair, and walk out to the street, where he became dizzy and was driven to the hospital in a police cruiser. Doctors at Rhode Island Hospital told him the bullet lodged in his leg muscle does not need to be removed; he expects to be discharged within days but will need physical therapy before returning to club volleyball and managing Brown's women's team. His father, James Yang, a Brown alumnus, described the episode as "distressing" for the family as they remain at his bedside. (A man was initially detained in the case but is now being released.)