Amid a week filled with finals, there seemed to be a faint whisper among students that encompassed campus Friday after a double homicide occurred Thursday night on the north side of campus.
Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, both University students, were found dead late Thursday at the Edward Gay Apartments at West Roosevelt Street and Governor Claiborne Drive.
Students were shocked, concerned and saddened by the news of the killings.
Thomas Pratchett, creative writing freshman, said although he feels for the victims, it is the one that are closest to the two young men that will suffer most.
“It’s a terrible travesty,” Pratchett said. “It’s going to be hard on their families. My initial thoughts were … about their families. Their families are thousands of miles away, and they willingly send their children off to study here. They’re going to have to deal with that.”
Pratchett, who was born in England, said as an international student, he does not feel as though he will be in any danger and said it’s a one-time incident.
Xiaofeng Chang, electrical engineering senior, is more apprehensive about the event.
“It reminded me about the Virginia Tech incident,” Chang said. “As an international student, something like this makes me feel insecure around campus.”
After the shootings were reported to LSU Police Department, the University released an e-mail. The University also sent out a text message to all students who signed up for the University’s emergency text messaging service, although many people signed up didn’t receive texts.
One student who did receive the text message said he received it about 4:00 a.m., five and a half hours after authorities had been notified of the double homicide.
“My phone woke me up out of a dead sleep,” said Drew O’Neal, finance sophomore. “At first I was kind of scared because I didn’t really think it could happen at LSU. But what got me even more was the fact that it took so long for me to get the message. I signed up for something to help keep me safe, and I surely didn’t feel very safe.”
Other students expressed their concerns about the effectiveness of the text message system the University has tried to implement.
Irina Cracium, mathematics senior, said she did not realize the importance of the text message until she got to campus Friday morning.
“I saw the e-mail last night, and the first thing I thought was, ‘I didn’t get a text message,'” Cracium said. “I didn’t pay too much attention to it first, but then when I left home and came to campus and did not have my computer, I realized all I had is my phone.”
Ryan Lee, finance senior, said he did not know about the shooting, and he said not receiving a text message about the incident is something the University should look into.
“It’s pretty scary,” Lee said. “I feel if [LSU is] going to take steps to implement a system, they need to make sure it works before they give students a false sense of security. They implement a system that came about after the Virginia Tech thing, and if they’re going to have a system like that and try to keep us safe, at least make it work.”
Most students said the incident is difficult to be compared to Virginia Tech.
O’Neal said he first thought about Virginia Tech when he read the message, but those fears soon while watching the news.
“I started realizing, later on, that it wasn’t anything like the Virginia Tech incident because of the fact that if they wanted to hurt more people they would have picked the library, the Union or something like that,” O’Neal said. “And since it was just two people somewhere isolated, I didn’t really think too much about it.”