‘A Nightmare Come True’ Stuns Students

For students like Terre Harrison and Sage Fleischman, the parklike UC Berkeley campus and the surrounding “student ghetto” will never be the same.

Stuck in traffic while driving to campus Thursday morning from their home in Oakland, Harrison and Fleischman could not believe what they were hearing on the radio.

“It’s like every woman’s worst nightmare,” said Fleischman, describing news reports of the night of horror endured by 33 hostages at Henry’s Bar and Grill, many of whom, like the two women, are Berkeley students.

“The more we heard about on the news the more upset we became. I just couldn’t stand to hear any more,” Fleischman said.

“I don’t know anybody (who was a hostage) but it’s really got me shaken up. It’s scary to think this could happen right in front of you,” Harrison said as the two ate lunch Thursday on Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza.

A nightmare come true. More than 20 students repeated that phrase in interviews as if it were a refrain, reflecting their shock at the all-night siege in which a deranged gunman killed one student, wounded seven others and forced some students to perform acts of sexual perversion before he was killed in a shoot-out with police.

The news was even more startling, several said, because it was the third fatal tragedy to occur on campus this month.

On Sept. 8, fire in a fraternity house just four blocks from Henry’s had claimed the lives of three undergraduates. On Sept. 16, Chris Buckridge, a leader among disabled students, died of head injuries when he fell out of his wheelchair while on his way to a campus rock concert.

“It’s a been a really (terrible) year,” sobbed Amy Vader, a blonde senior from Lodi, sitting with a sorority sister at the Berkeley Police Station. “I can’t believe it. It’s like a bad movie.”

Vader lost one friend in the fraternity fire and another of her friends, Karen Grunderhofer of Newport Beach, was treated at a hospital for wounds received when Mehrdad Dashti was firing guns inside Henry’s.

Grunderhofer has been “my best friend since I was 12 years old. (And another) girl who was held hostage is my roommate,” said Laura Crow, a senior from Saratoga who sat with Vader.

Like many students, Crow declined to identify that friend. There was a sense of unease on campus, a feeling that the victims had already been put through enough.

“This last crisis really pushed people over the limit in terms of stress. I don’t think anyone can take any more,” said Adam Gerstein, a junior who serves as a peer counselor on campus.

Gerstein said the number of students seeking counseling had doubled this semester even before the incident at Henry’s.

Berkeley “is notorious as a cold, impersonal environment and this just makes it even worse,” he said.

Cara Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the university’s health services department, said the trauma “will stay with people a long time. It’s not only the hostages but also their friends and family. Many other people on campus are also deeply sad.”

On Sproul Plaza and in popular south campus cafes, students could talk of little else.

“Berkeley’s just a stage for all these terrorists and weirdos to be recognized,” said Julie DeJoya, a junior from Downey. DeJoya moved away from Berkeley to El Cerrito, a suburb four miles north of town, after two years of living in Berkeley and “being harassed every day.”

“It makes me nervous. This place just makes me too nervous,” she said.

Uri Shumlak, a graduate engineering student, agreed.

“It’s one of the nicest places in the country,” he said. “But the crazy people are just too much to put up with.”

Friends of the lone student who was killed, John Nicholas Sheehy, 22, expressed disbelief.

“People are shocked and incredibly upset,” said a student who once roomed with Sheehy.

“Nick was really interesting. He was really into fate. He was heavy with fate,” said the student, who declined to give his name. “He was a serious guy. Intelligent, sharp-looking.”

Sheehy himself eerily presaged his death earlier this month while talking to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter shortly after the fatal fraternity-house fire. The reporter interviewed him because Sheehy lived across the street from the house.