(NECN: Scot Yount - Kingston, Rhode Island) - According to State Police, a professor and students heard somebody say during a lecture in Chafee Hall on the URI campus, "I am a good guy, and I have a gun."
That sparked what students described as a stampede and some students suffered bumps and bruises as they ran from the lecture hall. A flurry of calls to 911 brought out state and local police as well as campus police.
"There was word of a gunman, in Chaffee, but nobody really knew if he had a gun or if it was just a hoax," said a frightened female student.
"I saw the people run down the hill and then I kept getting messages on Facebook that were like, 'are you OK?' because we were in the building right next to it, it was crazy," said another.
Investigators locked down the campus and meticulously combed the building but found no shooter or weapon. They did, however, find a toy Nerf gun in a backpack, which may or may not have sparked the panic.
The toy gun may be related to Zombie Week, a game played on campus.
State Police said the "gun" would be part of the investigation.
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"It is certainly possible, in that, like I said earlier, members of our major crimes unit are investigating currently, that's part of what their investigation will be," said Castellone.
The university used a variety of social media to keep the students as well as the outside world informed as more information became available.
"My understanding is is Facebook continued to work throughout the incident, our website did go down, apparently it was getting something like one million hits a minute it was never meant to sustain that kind of interest, we will look at that to make sure that our systems are as resilient as possible," said the University's President, Dave Dooley.
