'12 minutes of horror': MSU professor describes how his class became deadly shooting zone

Lansing — The gunfire inside Marco Díaz-Muñoz's Michigan State University classroom on Monday night felt like it lasted an eternity.

It didn't. The shots fired inside Berkey Hall took minutes, but only minutes were required to unleash life-changing horror on the assistant professor and roughly 40 students in his evening humanities class about Cuban cultural identity.

The classroom where Díaz-Muñoz, 64, taught was ground zero for the mass shooting at Michigan State University on Monday, in which a 43-year-old gunman killed three students, wounded five others and caused a campus-wide lockdown for four terror-filled hours. Two of the students were killed in his classroom.

It was after 8 p.m. when Díaz-Muñoz said he was toward the end of his lesson when the first sounds of gunfire reverberated outside room 114, where he stood toward the front. Imagine a movie theater, a long room with rows of immovable chairs that face a teacher instead of a screen.

He didn't know what caused the sounds at first. Perhaps a transformer had blown. But then Díaz-Muñoz said he saw a man standing in the doorway at the other side of the room. He saw something metallic in his hands. Sparks.

"And then shots and shots and shots," said Díaz-Muñoz, snapping his fingers.

The students reacted. Some froze. Some dove under chairs. Some ran for the windows to make their escape.

After firing what Díaz-Muñoz estimated to be 15 bullets, the shooter walked out of the room. The professor didn't remember him saying anything. Díaz-Muñoz and the remaining students were left with the horrific aftermath.

Arielle Anderson, 19, of Harper Woods and Alexandria Verner, 20, of Clawson died in the shooting. They were students who had a life ahead of them, Díaz-Muñoz said, who wanted to learn, who had discipline and dreams and hope.

"And they were ended," he said. "Senselessly."

Other students were wounded. Some heroic ones stayed behind to put pressure on wounds, trying to help.

Díaz-Muñoz dedicated himself to holding tight onto the knob of a door near the front of the classroom, using all of his strength.

"No one knew whether he was going to come in again," he said. "All I knew was that I needed to close that door."

The police arrived, then paramedics. And Díaz-Muñoz surveyed the scene. Students were repeating cries for help. There was blood.

"The images are very vivid and clear in my head," he said. He remains struck by his inability to save his students or stop the shooting.

Five students remained hospitalized Thursday at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, with one getting upgraded to being in stable condition. The other four remain in critical condition, although the Chinese Consulate in Chicago released a Thursday statement saying two Chinese students were wounded, but after surgery, they were "out of danger."

Díaz-Muñoz is now committed to using his experience to inspire action.

From a chair in his living room, he repeated his story to reporters on Thursday. His north Lansing house was swarmed. Reporters from various media outlets assembled on the porch outside, waiting for their turn to hear his story following a report in Bridge Michigan. Their cars lined the street; their boots and equipment lined the entryway.

Over and over, Díaz-Muñoz recounted the horrific scene, described his inability to sleep, the nearly three days since the shooting he spent medicated and huddled under blankets, the images he can't shake. He usually is a private guy, but he said he is determined to use his experience to inspire politicians to adopt strict gun control policies.

"I think if the Senate and lawmakers in this country saw what I saw, they would be shamed into action," he said. "Or their humanity touched into action."

Díaz-Muñoz said state and federal lawmakers should act on gun control policies, including restricting the sale of high-powered automatic weapons, increasing background checks and creating waiting periods for firearm purchases. Personally, he has redoubled his commitment that he never will own a gun. He said he would never unleash such violence.

Gun control legislation is at a standstill in Washington, D.C., where Congress is divided. Democrats hold a narrow majority in the Senate, while Republicans have a slim majority in the House.

In Lansing, the Democrats who now lead the Legislature have vowed quick action on gun regulation legislation. Legislators are crafting bills that would require stricter universal background checks for handgun purchases, a safe gun storage law and a red flag law that would allow police to petition a judge to temporarily take away weapons from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last month called for those gun regulations in her State of the State address.

The legislation faces opposition from gun rights advocates and most Republican lawmakers, with the Grand Rapids-based Great Lakes Gun Rights arguing the proposed bills wouldn't have stopped the MSU gunman. Some Republican legislators have argued that schools should be made safer, mental health screening and existing gun laws enforced.

Action on gun control policy won't be inspired by level-headed debate, Díaz-Muñoz said. It will come from passion. And passion comes from understanding the magnitude of what gun violence brings to a person, a family, a classroom, he said.

"The biggest changes in history have not happened because people said 'let's be level-headed, let's be rational and make decisions rational decisions.' No. That's BS," Díaz-Muñoz said. "The biggest changes in history have happened when people had led their humanity into action. When they have been touched."

The same goes for mental health care, Díaz-Muñoz said. Not providing robust mental health care in the U.S., a wealthy country, is "just political will."

Police officials said the suspected shooter, 43-year-old Anthony McRae, had mental health challenges and said his father described him as reclusive.

Some changes could happen on the university level, Díaz-Muñoz said, such as creating mechanisms to easily lock classroom doors from the inside or creating designated escape routes. But he said his colleagues and university leaders have reached out to him and offered support, offering to do what they can.

Part of him doesn't want to return to Berkey Hall. But another part knows it will be a relief to see his students, and perhaps it will be a relief for them to see him, too.

"Those 12 minutes of horror brought us together as a community," Díaz-Muñoz said. "Those kids now feel to me like my family."

ckthompson@detroitnews.com