On December 21, in the deadliest attack in modern Czech history, a gunman shot dead 14 people and injured another 25 at Charles University in Prague. Among the students in classes when the chaos erupted was Čeněk Housa, a 22-year-old philosophy and sociology major. While he was physically unarmed, the traumatic events made an impact on how he viewed such violence. He shares his recollections and his philosophical take on shootings.
Q. Please take us through that day.
A. I went to the library in the basement. At around 12, there were two policemen walking through the library, not heavily armed or anything. I remember that in my group chat with my class, someone sent a photo of the killer at around 12ish, so this was confusing. Someone was in the building saying that the policemen are looking for this man. If anyone was to see him, we should report it. Not saying anything about him being armed or having a deadly purpose.
I had a class from 2 to 3:50 on the third floor. The shooting happened mainly on the fourth floor and the shooting happened during that class. I remember that we heard some noises coming from the upper floor, but it was as if somebody was moving furniture. The teacher just made some quick comment about it not being worthy of attention.
All of a sudden we started hearing noises coming from the stairs, very loud noises as if someone was screaming. I remember two of the students wanted to go home; then they came back saying that there were policemen in the building looking for a shooter. The first intention was to lock ourselves in, but the class couldn't be locked because it could only be locked from the outside.
We decided to all just get out of the class. Then as we got out, the policemen were already coming to the third floor, 'taking care of us.' They were screaming at us. They just said, “Run, run down.” They didn't know who the shooter was or where he was, so they were also aiming at us with their guns as we were running.
Five minutes after being evacuated I heard the shots outside because he was also shooting from the upper balcony down the street. I was already quite far away, although not that far away. He could’ve probably got an angle on me, I think.
Q. What emotions were going through you at that moment?
A. I didn't really realize the impact of what was happening at the moment. I was sort of, without emotions. I would guess as a defense mechanism that I just let all my feelings go away. They were put under the curtain so that I could somehow fluently get through the situation.
A. Around three days after it, we all needed to talk about it every day. We all gathered in cafes and just talked it through. Through talking, you connect yourself with the words that you're saying and the words give the object some sort of order and you connect yourself with order and the order makes the chaos more graspable.
Through grasping it, you're not stressed about it as much. And even saying that it's something that is not possible to be grasped is in some sense a way of grasping it, because you know that it's something that you're never going to be able to explain.
So after three days I was just repeating the same sentences to people that I saw and everybody was asking, are you okay?
Q. Now that several months have passed, how do you feel about the shooting?
A. I feel like there isn’t any motive behind it. It's like a natural catastrophe. I have it connected to something that was out of our control that just happened. I see it as something like an analogy to a tsunami. You cannot explain a tsunami. I mean, like you can, with the plates but that still doesn't explain why such a thing would happen.
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