Emily Salmonsen looked down at her phone during class to read her messages.
As she pieced together what was happening nearly 150 miles away at Florida State University, the 21-year-old University of Florida marine science junior immediately thought of her father, a law enforcement officer with the Tallahassee Police Department.
"I quickly checked his location, and of course, he was at FSU," she said. "All of my friends, if they're not at UF, they're at FSU."
Two people were killed and six others injured Thursday at Florida State after a student identified as the 20-year-old son of a sheriff's deputy opened fire near the student union. The two people killed in the attack were not students, the campus police chief said.
Salmonsen is among more than 400 students studying in Gainesville from their hometown of Tallahassee, coping with the tragedy from afar, grieving the violence that hit too close to home.
The incident also reignited Salmonsen's long standing support for stricter gun laws – an issue she first protested at Florida's Capitol when she was 14, she said.
"Being from Tallahassee, I feel obviously more connected to the situation," she said. "Knowing people that are there … makes it feel more personal and therefore more real."
Simone Bell, 47, is a UF business junior and also works as an accountant for FSU, she said. She was working remotely Thursday. She said it's difficult to balance her professional ties to FSU with the emotional weight of the tragedy as a student at another university.
"When I took the job, that's always been at the back of my mind, because there has been the history of school shooters at universities," she said. "Every day that I go into the office, I think about an escape route."
FSU hasn't had an on-campus shooting since 2014, when three people were shot outside and inside the entrance of the Strozier Library. Responding police fatally shot the gunman in that case.
Bell said she hopes Thursday's events encourage students to be more aware of their surroundings – and their emotions. No motive in Thursday's shootings has emerged. Police said the gunman declined to talk to them after his arrest.
"Hopefully we can raise our children not to actually always go for a weapon to resolve conflict," she said. "Just how to … process our emotions in a way where we don't act out and harm others."
Brock Burnett, 19, was asleep when the shooting happened just before noon. The UF biology freshman said he woke up to "so many text messages" from close friends back home.
"Instantly I was like, wow, this is so horrible," he said. "One of my close friends, she was in a building right next to the main union… she was hiding."
The news made Burnett reflect on how UF might respond to a similar threat. FSU planned a vigil on campus for Friday night.
"It really brought them together, putting aside differences, to really come together to show support and be there for people," he said. "It does raise questions, because things like this have happened before at other colleges and universities. So, it really makes me start to wonder what needs to change."
Burnett said he received active shooter training during student orientation, and hopes UF emphasizes it more moving forward.
Meenakshi Nalla, 20, a UF information systems sophomore, said she learned of the shooting through group chats warning her to check in on her friends.
Though her parents live far from campus in Tallahassee, she said she felt stressed out by the lack of response from her friends at FSU, worried they might be "the next victim."
She hopes the shooting's proximity – just over a mile from the Florida Capitol – compels lawmakers to act, she said. The Legislature this year rejected an effort to lower the age for someone to be allowed to buy an assault rifle to 18. It also rejected other bills to allow students and faculty to carry guns on college campuses.
"Nothing's really making an impact on our government," she said. "I hope something like this genuinely made an impact and it changes things."
Quinn Carrasquilla, 19, a UF aerospace engineering freshman, found out about the shooting from his mom and brother – both of whom were on FSU's campus at the time. He said he hopes students set aside the rivalry between UF and FSU in the wake of the tragedy, calling the issue "irrelevant in a matter like this."
Instead, Quinn said he hopes UF leadership publicly announces their sympathy and support against gun violence.
"Text your mom you love her as much as you can, give your brother a call," he said. "It's just a random Thursday, it can happen anytime, anywhere."
"Our hearts go out to everyone who has been affected by the shootings and their loved ones," UF President Kent Fuchs posted on X.
"The University of Florida Police will have an increased, visible presence on campus, following the horrific shootings in Tallahassee," UF's police chief, Bart Knowles, wrote in an email.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings, the FSU shooting is the sixth mass shooting to happen in Florida and the 81st in the U.S. in 2025.
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