PROVIDENCE, RI — Bundled against the cold and snow and holding candles, the crowd came together in Lippitt Park to hold a vigil for two students killed and nine others injured in a shooting at Brown University 24 hours earlier.

The vigil was a culmination of a day of mourning on campus and in a city that only had two other homicides this year before Saturday’s shooting.

Holding up a candle and explaining that it was the first night of Hannukah, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said that he hope it might symbolize the “first little flicker for our community to get together and heal.”

Sarah Mack, a rabbi at a neighborhood synagogue, said the shooting left the community with, “a sense of safety shattered.”

“We all know that their biggest worry this week should have been finishing their finals and getting home for the holiday,” Providence City Councilor Sue Anderbois said.

Other elected officials, including Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee and members of the state’s congressional delegation also attended the vigil.

After hearing from officials, the crowd started to sing Amazing Grace, while some community members embraced and cried.

Some students attended the public vigil, but many went home as soon as they could after the city lifted a shelter-in-place order Sunday morning.

During the day, students rolled suitcases down sidewalks and stuffed bags into their parents’ cars. Classes and finals have been canceled for the rest of the semester.

Brown opened its dining hall before noon, and those still on campus, rushed to grab food after a night in lockdown.

Vicky Tobin, a student’s mother, waited outside the cafeteria, called the Ratty, for her son and his roommate. They’d been stuck in their room all night with little food, and at times her son was hiding in his closet.

When Tobin finally spotted him, she ran up to him, crying, to give him and his roomate a huge hug.

Tobin took a selfie with the boys — she’d promised her son’s roommate’s parents back in Ohio that she’d send a photo of them the minute she saw them.

“I was okay because I knew he was okay,” she said through tears.

While the mood was somber, students hugging and recalling what happened the night before, there were moments of lightness.

A group of students gather in front of the school’s main cafeteria, it reopened to students around noon, to throw show balls at a statue of Caesar on the quad.

Someone had traced the school motto, “Ever True” into the snow.

Others started an impromptu snow ball fight before going inside to get food.

Students said the beauty of the campus felt so different from the horror of the night before

Ishaan Jain, a freshman taking the intro economics course at Brown, said he was supposed to go to the study session but opted not to.

He believes he knows someone who was killed in the room. He didn’t know the person well.

“I feel guilty about that,” he said. “It’s really horrible.”

Over the course of the day, people started to visit the complex of engineering building where the shooting happened.

Two alums who graduated last year and still live in Providence decided to stop by the complex of building where the shooting happened the next morning.

Kayla Shields and Kiah Brautile said that it just felt like something they needed to do. They’d been locked down at home the night before.

Brautile said she had been checking the news over and over again but hadn’t gotten a lot of details that actually described what happened to the people hurt.

Shield said she felt it was that “classic trope, I couldn’t imagine it would happen here.”

By mid afternoon, a memorial of flowers and candles had formed in front of the buildings, next to a sculpture of an infinity symbol and behind yellow police tape.

A freshman named Maram, who wished to just share her first name, stood in front of the memorial for several minutes, staring at the building where it happened.

When she returned to where her mother, who is also a Brown alum, was standing on the other side of the street, her face was streaked with mascara.

Saturday night Maram had been on her way to the Engineer Research Building, which is attached and connected to Barus and Holley, where the shooting happened.

“I’m there 24/7,” Maram, who is an engineering student, said. “I was lucky enough to be a little late.”

Rushing over to study for finals, she got a call from a friend asking where she was — and then she started seeing people run from the building.

“They were being such great students,” she said of those who were in the study session when the gunfire broke out.

“They are my classmates,” she said between sobs. “I see them as my brothers and sisters.”

________

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.