- Heroes emerged during the horrific chaos after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at UVU.
- Strangers helped each other find safety and get off campus in the aftermath.
- One father of a student said it's OK to believe differently and love each other.
“Look for the angels, the heroes” was the advice a Columbine High School shooting survivor offered to those who were present when Charlie Kirk was killed at a Utah Valley University event Wednesday.
Cindy Maudsley, who was 15 at the time of the Columbine murders, told Deseret News that embracing the acts of kindness and courage both witnessed and experienced would add sweetness and hope to a tough journey forward from a hateful situation.
That crowd of 3,000 or more who had gathered to hear the conservative Kirk talk politics and ideals contained plenty of heroes, according to those who were there.
Witnesses described some people hugging strangers and helping them up, others providing rides away from campus and even shelter. A group of men reportedly formed a circle around a woman and her very young children to keep them from being knocked down as terrified attendees scrambled to get away from what they feared would be a mass shooting.
Even the photographs that showed horror and fear often depicted people caring for each other, too.
Gathering the family amid chaos
Lehi resident Tiffany Barker was a huge admirer of Kirk’s and was thrilled to be there with her extended family, including her parents, three of her sisters and 10 of the children in their extended family, including two of her own. The kids in the group were all 11 to 20 years old.
The younger family members had moved closer to the front so they could see. When the shot rang out, those children not only saw what happened, but some were separated from family and from each other “as people were screaming and crying and running for their lives,” Barker said. They didn’t know there would only be that single shot.
A college student spotted Barker’s “young and frantic” 12-year-old daughter and promised to stay with her in the tumult until her mother was found. “She risked her life to stay there,” Barker said.
Barker’s 14-year-old niece was momentarily alone and didn’t know what to do or where to go in a very unfamiliar situation and setting. “Can you help me, please?” she asked two strangers, both college students. They took her back to their apartment and stayed with her for hours until they could get through the lockdown to her, contacting the girl’s parents so they’d know she was safe and where to find her when it was OK to do so.
“There were so many people who didn’t know each other and stepped up,” Barker said.
The shooting’s impact on the children has been profound and tragic, she added, noting that her children slept in her room that night because they were so unsettled.
Helping and getting help
Courtney Brewster, a 23-year-old UVU student from Provo, found herself in dual roles, needing and later providing help on what she describes as “probably the most horrible day of my life so far.”
She went with her best friend and two siblings to hear Kirk. “We love him,” she said. They were about 20 yards away from him on the second step of the lawn area when they heard the gunshot, she said.
Others around her said it was fireworks, but she thought it was a gunshot. She immediately threw herself on her 15-year-old sister and her 20-year-old brother who has autism. She was yelling “get down” and “crawl up the steps.”
“We didn’t know if there was a mass shooter and we saw (Kirk) shot,” she said. Everyone was stumbling up the steps and crying and when they got into the closest building, she was hyperventilating. A stranger — a “boy who was 18 or 20″ — cupped her face to steady her and told her to breathe in and then out, to calm down. She did.
They hadn’t arrived in the same car, but when her group made it to the parking lot, they encountered three students they didn’t know who had just arrived on campus and were walking toward the chaos. Brewster told them what had happened and got them in her car, then she drove until she could let them out a safe distance away. “It was terrifying for sure,” she said.
Putting others’ safety first
Chelsea Heslington, a lead designer, was in the athletics design team office with other designers when they heard people screaming, and then 20 to 30 students raced through their unlocked door. The panicked group was talking about an active shooter on campus.
As she told the story, Heslington paused and apologized for feeling emotional. “That is never a situation that I would expect to be in and I would never want anybody to be in.”
Her whole team, she said, “just kind of went into trying to help the students feel safer in this situation, letting them talk if they needed to and giving hugs. There was a group of students that said a prayer together.”
Heslington said they debated locking the door, but worried they would shut out others seeking safety and they didn’t want to do that.
Love thy neighbor
Greg and Jody Busse were walking on campus to meet their daughter, Rylee, a UVU volleyball player, at the team’s locker room when they heard the gunshot and saw people fleeing. Rylee and a few other players locked themselves in the locker room.
“One of the equipment managers ran full sprint to check on the girls and stayed with them until the police came. That 21-year-old man is a hero in my eyes for protecting my daughter and the girls,” Greg Busse posted on Facebook.
“Young people crying and fleeing scared is something I wish on nobody. I had rage in my heart that someone could be that evil to commit murder. Hearing the gun sound is something that will never leave me.”
Police escorted the players out safely a few hours later. The young man declined an interview, saying he didn’t think his actions needed to be highlighted.
Busse said he’s grateful for the courageous individuals who did courageous things.
“If you have hate in your heart for someone who believes different you are the problem. It’s just political views,” he wrote “‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ It is OK to believe different and love each other.”
