EMMITSBURG -Emma Schmidt and Rachel Weschler were sitting in philosophy class yesterday morning at Mount St. Mary's University when they received a string of ominous voice and text messages on their cell phones.
The first was an automated voice message from the university urging students to "find a safe place and stay put." Next came a text message from the school that brought one classmate to tears, they said.
"It read, 'Shots fired in Sheridan Hall,' " recalled Schmidt, 19, a sophomore from Mount Airy. "We all started getting very nervous."
The students, who said their thoughts flashed to the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007, immediately locked the door.
"We were thinking the worst," said Weschler, 19, a sophomore from St. Mary's County who kept her classmates apprised of news reports and e-mail updates on her laptop.
The alerts came after a student at the private Catholic school reported finding a bullet lodged in the window of her third-floor dormitory room. The report came in about 10:30 a.m., and Mount St. Mary's officials ordered the school of about 2,100 students locked down while campus police and county sheriff's deputies investigated.
Police said the bullet was from a 9 mm handgun, but they had not yet determined when the shot was fired or whether it was intentional. The bullet hit a double-paned window in Sheridan Hall, shattering the first pane and cracking the second, police said. No one was injured.
"We don't know exactly how far, but it is possible that the bullet was fired from a handgun off campus," said Cpl. Jennifer Bailey, a spokeswoman for the Frederick County Sheriff's Office. "The way the bullet hit the window, the evidence technicians are saying that the bullet came from a long ways away."
The campus of the 204-year-old school is on U.S. 15 in rural Frederick County, not far from the Pennsylvania border.
Yesterday morning, the school's Web site reported the discovery of the bullet and instructed students to "shelter in place" until an all-clear message was sent.
After a couple of hours, the lockdown was lifted. In the afternoon, the school's president, Thomas H. Powell, held an assembly and declared the campus safe.
"Everything is back to normal. Everyone is assuming their regular routines," Powell said shortly before addressing about 300 students and staff in Knott Auditorium. "From my perspective, it all went right."
