Pretending to be dead and using chewing gum: How Florida students survived mass shooting

Florida State University (FSU) students found creative ways to survive the mass shooting on Thursday. Some used chewing gum to cover classroom windows with paper, while others pretended to be dead.

Jeffrey LaFray, one of the students in the classroom when the shooting took place near the Students' Union, described how he and his classmates hid and tried to stay safe.

LaFray told ABC’s Good Morning America that their teacher came up with a solution to prevent the shooter from seeing inside the classroom.

They planned to cover the windows with paper, but there was one problem: they didn’t have tape to stick it. 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 went a step further and pretended to be dead so that she could survive 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.’

The FSU mass shooting

A mass shooting at the Florida State University (FSU) campus in the United States’ Tallahassee left two people dead and at least six injured on Thursday. A 20-year-old suspect was shot at and taken into custody by law enforcement personnel. The suspect, identified as Phoenix Ikner, is the son of Leon County Sheriff’s deputy Jessica Ikner and reportedly used her firearm during the shooting.

The shooting happened near the university’s student union. After the initial gunshots were fired at 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.

The suspect was shot at and wounded by the police after he did not follow the commands. The lockdown at the university was lifted at around 3 pm EDT after nearly three hours. People were still advised to stay away from the shooting site, which had been cordoned off with crime scene tape.