During a busy exam season, a gunman killed two and injured nine others after walking onto Brown University’s campus.
Among those wounded was Jacob Spears, an 18-year-old from Georgia who graduated from Evans High School in Columbia County.
The day after the shooting, Spears spoke to a reverend at his hometown church and, despite his injuries, expressed gratitude that he survived last week’s attack on the Rhode Island campus.
“His words to us were, ‘Praise the Lord, I’m alive.’ And I’m so thankful,” said the Rev. Amy Carpenter, in a phone interview Wednesday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The pastor at Christ the King Lutheran Church said she has known Spears since 2019 and said he had been eager to go to the Ivy League school, where he is majoring in computer science and minoring in economics.
Carpenter described him as a bright and thoughtful teen who she never imagined would end up in such tragic circumstances. She said she was shocked to learn about the shooting during a phone call from Spears’ grandparents.
“We just called the whole church to prayer for him, and we’re joyful that he’s doing well and he’s improving,” Carpenter said.
Spears’ immediate family members could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Family members traveled from Georgia to Rhode Island to be with him, according to an online GoFundMe campaign created to raise funds for the student’s recovery.
The shooting at the Providence university happened around 4 p.m. Saturday in an engineering building.
According to CBS News, who interviewed Spears from the hospital, the teen was attending a study session at the Barus and Holley building. The gunfire began as students were getting ready to leave, he told the news organization.
Despite getting shot, Spears managed to run outside “through sheer adrenaline and courage,” where he received help from others, according to the GoFundMe site.
The donation effort had amassed about $67,000 by Wednesday afternoon.
State Rep. Rick Allen, whose district includes Evans, wrote in an online post he is grateful Spears is expected to recover.
“Please continue to pray for the families and loved ones of those we lost and all of those impacted by this tragedy,” Allen wrote.
A day after Saturday’s shooting, officials said a person of interest who had been detained would be released without charges. Since then, the Providence Police Department has released new images and videos of a person of interest.
The two students killed were identified as Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old from Virginia whose family immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2011, and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from Alabama, according to officials and several news organizations. Cook was a pianist and the vice president of the university’s Republican Club, the university said in a message to the Brown community.
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