How Florida Students Survived Mass Shooting: Pretending to Be Dead, Using Chewing Gum

How Florida Students Survived Mass Shooting: Creative methods were taken by Florida State University (FSU) students for runaway survival from the mass shooting that occurred on Thursday. Some students used chewing gum to cover classroom windows with paper, while others pretended to be dead.

A fellow student, Jeffrey LaFray, was inside the classroom during when the shooting happened very close to the Students' Union. He narrated how he and the rest of his classmates managed to hide from the shooter in trying to keep safe.

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LaFray said about their teacher inventing something to prevent the shooter from seeing inside the classroom.

Their plan was to cover the windows using paper. However, there was one problem: they didn't have tape to put it down. The students then started chewing gum and used it to attach the paper to the windows.

"The teacher was asking if any of us had tape to tape up some paper. And no one had tape, and so some of us, we just got out our gum and started chewing so we could stick some paper to the windows," LaFray said.

Another graduate student had thus gone a step further and pretended to die for survival during the firing. Madison Askins recalled walking with a friend near a union building when she was shot in the back.

"When I was shot in the buttocks from behind, I fell to the ground, kept my eyes shut, and played dead. I released all the muscles in my body, closed my eyes, and held my breath. And I would take short breaths in between when I needed to,” she told ABC News.

Askins said that she knew that if she moved, the shooter would have fired at her again. She recalled hearing the shooter reloading the weapon and telling the escaping students to 'keep running.'

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The FSU mass shooting

A mass shooting at the Florida State University (FSU) campus in the Tallahassee city of the United States left two dead and at least six injured. A 20-year-old suspect has also been shot and arrested. The suspect, named Phoenix Ikner, was reportedly using his mother's gun during the shooting. His mother is identified as Jessica Ikner, the deputy sheriff of Leon County.

The shooting took place near the university's student union. After the first shots were fired around 11:20 am ET, some students and parents headed to a bowling alley to hide and also crammed into an elevator, AP reported. Students also rushed away from the student union area where the shooting happened.

There was an event in which the suspect refused the university security command and fired back. Nearly three hours after the shooting incident lockdown at the university was lifted at around 3 pm EDT. However, people were still advised to stay away from the shooting site, which had been cordoned off with crime scene tape.

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