Campus Like a Horror Movie Vanessa Williams 22oct02
IT was like a scene from an American horror movie – the one where a stalking campus gunman strikes terror into the hearts of innocent university students.
But for the students and staff of Monash University, it was all too real.
Yesterday should have been just another day for the 2000 people believed to have been in the Robert Menzies Building at Monash University's Clayton campus.
It is the time of the year when major assignments are due and exams loom.
On the sixth floor of the 11-storey building, also known as the Ming Wing, an honours econometrics class was being held.
About 15 students were believed to be in the tutorial, which one student said was on the subject of "the optimisation of business modelling".
Around 11.20am, this class was invaded by a killer armed with handguns who police say shot indiscriminately in the class until brought under control by economics lecturer Lee Gordon-Brown and associate professor Brett Inder.
Students on the fifth and seventh floors heard shots ring out.
Some thought a concrete slab had fallen from a nearby construction site.
Others heard nothing and continued their tutorials in blissful ignorance.
But that was only until their class ended and, walking out of the room, they saw police in the corridor and chaos and confusion.
Then the knowledge, along with fear and shock, hit with full force.
Samara was waiting to enter an Indonesian oral exam on the fifth floor when she heard the screams.
"We just heard someone go: 'Oh my God, oh my God, get out, help me, help me, get out.' We just ran straight out."
Hundreds of students milled around the Robert Menzies Building, in which humanities, including politics and economics are taught.
They stood, most in jeans, many whispering into their mobile phones.
Some slumped on rocks scattered about the green, their skin pale, shaking hands holding cigarettes.
The only sounds were the blades of police helicopters.
"Why does there have to be killing?" one student asks, plaintively.
"What's going on?"
"It's like we're in America," said another.
"Shit, first Bali, now this. What's going on with the world?"
Janey, 22, an honours econometrics student, was searching with her friends for their mate Steven, who was supposed to have been in the fateful tutorial.
The class was small, Janey said. About 15 people. She looked on the edge of panic.
Janey knew the alleged gunman. He was a mature-aged student of Malaysian descent.
"He is really quiet . . . and he doesn't talk to anyone. He doesn't follow instructions when the lecturer will tell us what to do. He just doesn't say anything at all.
"His English wasn't very fluent."
Emma Metlikovec, 21, was in the doctor's surgery inside the Campus Centre. A female student with blood on her face staggered in, followed by a male student with wounds to his shoulder and hands.
"There was blood everywhere," she said.
A little girl in the doctor's surgery said: "Is he (the gunman) going to come down here?"
