Ohio State Attack: Student Tells CNN ‘Military Men’ Guarded Doors on Campus

While Ohio State University students were still under a shelter-in-place directorate and police departments and SWAT teams were swarming the area near Watts Hall, a student told CNN she was huddled with others in Gurlock Hall and taking solace in the fact that their doors were being guarded by “military men.”

The “military men” were presumably not in uniform and certainly not armed, but they had had military training and told their schoolmates they would stand guard and stop an attacker, should he find their whereabouts.

A transcript of CNN’s broadcast during the lockdown reveals the student was Molly Clarke, a first year MBA student.

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan spoke to Clarke via cell phone and asked what she was seeing and hearing.

Clarke responded:

From where we are, it’s pretty calm. All the streets are blocked off. You can’t see a lot of commotion on this end of the building. The entire parking garage is surrounded by SWAT team and there’s a helicopter, there’s actually quite a few helicopters that are circling around the campus. And so we have just been on lockdown for the past hour or so and waiting to hear more.

Bolduan then reiterated the lockdown order and asked Clarke if there had been any changes in status. Clarke affirmed that they were still in lockdown; that one supect had been killed but there were still concerns a second suspect could be on the loose.

Bolduan asked, “How are you doing?”

Clarke replied: “It’s slightly terrifying. I’m in the MBA first year class here. We have quite a few military men in our class who actually are all standing by the doors, keeping us safe. Feeling pretty good about that.”

Roughly an hour and half later, after the ordeal was over and the campus safe, Albany, New York, Fox 23 anchor John Gray put up a Facebook post in which he recounted hearing Molley Clarke’s phone interview with CNN. Gray wrote:

Lost in all the chaos at Ohio State University today was something that most people probably missed. About an hour into it, when everyone was “sheltering in place” all over campus, CNN took a phone call from a young woman who was locked inside a classroom right near where the suspect was hurting people. She said she was a graduate student and she and many others were huddled together scared and not sure what was happening outside. Then she said something made me tear up. She said casually to the TV anchor over the phone, “But we happened to have a few ‘military guys’ in my class and the minute we got the text message alert of an ‘active shooter on campus’ they moved the rest of us away from the door and then all of them stood guard right by the door.” She said they were standing there as she spoke making certain if a shooter or someone with a knife or whatever calamity tried to come through that door, they would be the first thing he’d see and they’d stop it and protect the other students or die trying.

Gray closed his post, writing:

Those “military guys” instantly put themselves on the clock and assumed the position to protect those unarmed, vulnerable students.  I thought that was impressive. I thought that was brave. I thought that was oh so very American. I also thought you’d want to know.

Gray’s Facebook post went viral with over 500,000 shares at the time of this writing.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.