DEKALB, Illinois -Today marks the tenth anniversary of the shootings at Northern Illinois University, when a lone gunman opened fire on campus and killed five people.
Sara Kershaw was a senior on campus at the time, and is now a teacher at Orion High School.
"It's always kind of a weird, somber start to Valentines Day," she said.
"I walked into the Campus Life building and the tornado lights were flashing and people running around. They said there's a shooter or maybe shooters on campus, people are getting shot all over. It was a time when you didn't have news alerts in your pocket and so we didn't know how many shooters there were. Everyone was trying to make calls at the same time and the cell phone towers were just completely fried," she recalled, in an interview conducted in between classes on Wednesday.
She says she tries to instill in her students the necessity of active shooter drills. She knows firsthand, it can happen anywhere.
"Every year, I'm kind of met with some resistance," she said. "I think they think we live in a really safe town where nothing really happens. I try to explain to them that you just never know when its going be you. You have to be prepared."
