WPRI 12’s Kim Kalunian on Rushing to the Shooting at Brown University

“In the pit of your stomach, you’re wondering, ‘Is the gunman still in this area? Are we safe?’”

Kim Kalunian, a reporter and anchor at WPRI 12, in Providence, also known as Channel 12, has lived in the area all her life. “What I loved about reporting was the fact that I was reporting on a place I knew intimately well,” she told me. On Saturday afternoon, when a colleague called to let her know that a mass shooter had opened fire on Brown University’s campus, Kalunian was at home, in a Providence suburb. She knew she had to drive to the scene.

Scanner traffic can be hard to understand. Erroneous reports, including one that claimed a suspect had been taken into custody, started circulating fast. In the aftermath of the attack, one of at least seventy-five school shootings this year, it was revealed that two students—Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov—had been killed. Nine others had been injured. On Sunday, local police reported they had a person of interest in custody. On Monday, that person was released. Authorities have not yet identified a shooter. “Frankly, I think the entire state is grieving,” Kalunian said. Her account has been edited for length and clarity.

It was a strange day, as you might imagine. My husband, Ted, is actually one of my colleagues. He also works at Channel 12 as a reporter, and he had gone in to work on something else that afternoon. We have a three-and-a-half-year-old, so I was home with her, and when I’m with her, I try not to look at my phone, because parenthood is all-consuming—especially when you’re parenting a toddler. That day, I happened to have my Apple Watch on, which I normally don’t at home. Tim White, our chief investigative reporter, called me. It made me a little nervous, frankly, because Ted wasn’t home. It seemed unusual. And so I rushed to get my phone to see what was going on. When I picked up, Tim said, “Are you aware of what’s going on?”