BOISE, Idaho — This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
On Tuesday, authorities charged Tailei Qi, a University of North Carolina graduate student, with having a 9mm handgun on educational property and first-degree murder in a fatal shooting of his faculty advisor, Zijie Yan.
The shooting caused a campus-wide lockdown while police searched for the gunman, leading to students barricading themselves in classrooms and dorm rooms. It’s another instance of a fatal public shooting in the United States and, like many in the recent past, it has garnered national headlines coming from one of the country’s premier universities.
Boise School Board Trustee Shiva Rajbhandari, who just arrived on the UNC campus for his freshman year, hid in the basement of the Genome Sciences Building, approximately 500 feet away from Caudill Labs.
A 911 call reporting shots fired at Caudill Labs was received on Monday by campus police around 1 p.m., according to the Associated Press. Sirens went off minutes later, issuing an emergency alert and starting a lockdown on campus.
Rajbhandari had just finished his education policy class and was talking to friends outside of the science building, when a friend rushed over to him with news of an active shooter on campus. They all rushed into the science building, down concrete steps to the basement.
According to Rajbhandari, there were over 100 students in the stairwell.
“There was a door that was open with students pouring in through this door,” Rajbhandari said.
His immediate thoughts were terrifying.
“I was like, ‘OK, someone could run in and it would be a clear line of fire all the way around the stairwell,’” Rajbhandari said. “They could kill every single one of us in seconds, literally seconds.”
Rajbhandari’s thoughts turned to the contents in his backpack. Could his laptop block bullets? If it came to it, the laptop would have to do. Suddenly, the stairwell felt colder, Rajbhandari said.
“We’ve had lockdowns before. I remember someone came on Boise High campus with like a gun,” Rajbhandari said. “But standing there in that stairwell with 100 people on the concrete stairs kind of stuck in traffic with nowhere to go....I was actually really terrified.”
Eventually, students shuffled down the stairs and through the door into the basement, sitting next to water heaters and blocks of countertops, which they used to block the basement entrance, Rajbhandari said.
They stayed there for hours, listening to emergency medical service radio, Rajbhandari said. Some students, like Rajbhandari, didn’t have service. Others were frantically texting loved ones and sharing information as it came.
“Everyone was crying,” Rajbhandari said. “Everyone was calling their parents.”
Rumors spread rapidly, so it was unclear what was actually happening. After a while, an officer came to escort students to the lecture hall in the science building. Overwhelmed with the day’s chaos, Rajbhandari was surprised to find himself pulling out his textbook and working on his homework in the lecture hall.
“It was like nothing had happened. Except everyone knew that something had happened,” Rajbhandari said.
The atmosphere at the school has shifted dramatically. It’s quiet and eerie for the second week of classes, Rajbhandari said.
Classes at UNC were canceled on Tuesday, but school will begin again on Wednesday. Rajbhandari and his friends organized a vigil for Tuesday night and a March for our Lives walkout will take place on Wednesday.
The experience has left Rajbhandari with time to reflect on his time in Boise schools, which he says he feels immense gratitude for.
“Our Boise school facilities are really safe,” Rajbhandari said. “I’m really grateful to Bill McKitrick, our safety security manager, who’s installed raptor identification, so anyone who comes into our school we’ve run an automatic background check on them, and then if something comes up, where we’re able not to let them into the school.”
While Boise schools are not immune to shootings, Rajbhandari said students are a lot safer because of precautions put in place by the district and McKitrick.
In college, conversations are often started the same way — ‘what’s your name?’ ‘where are you from?’ and ‘what’s your major?’ Those introductory questions have grown to be tiresome for many students, including Rajbhandari.
Now, before people ask for Rajbhandari’s name, they ask where he was at the time of the shooting.
“I feel really silly for complaining about everyone asking what my name is now,” Rajbhandari said.
This article originally appeared in the Idaho Press, read more on IdahoPress.com.
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