Sunday morning began with an ominous tone.
A P.A. system beeped, a male voice said “fire alert” and then I herd a siren. I was shaken from my sleep. I joined my friends outside at 6:40 a.m. for a dorm fire drill.
The dorm drill would have had little signifcance if not for an event that occurredless than a mile from my dorm. Only a few hours earlier, the student union’s fire alarm had been activiated. When the crowd moved outside — as we now know – a stabbing incident occurred.
I learned about the incident once I returned to my room. I logged onto Facebook to update my status about the crassness of the early morning drill. When I checked my news feed, I read about a stabbing on someone’s facebook status. I checked my e-mail to find an emergency alert from the university waiting in my inbox. It told of a stabbing across campus but didn’t offer many details. During breakfast, someone told me that they had heard on ESPN that a UCONN cornerback had died from the incident. I checked Google News and read the story for myself through the Hartford Courant.
I didn’t bother to go use the field house to work out that day because a friend had told me that the police had sealed the streets around the Student Union. When I went to check Facebook later that day for some possible updates, a friend had invited me to a Facebook group, “Wear Number 6 @ Rentschler Field”. Already, some huskies had banded together to find a way to honor the memory of a fellow husky, Jasper Howard (football cornerback) who had died in the incident, by encouraging people to wear Jasper’s number at an upcoming game.
While the yellow tape is gone, remnants of Sunday remain. When I walked out of class today, I saw TV newscrews assembled on Fairfield Way. The photos of the area are posted below. More to come…
