The Mass-Shooting Survivor Network

“Talking to others has helped me realize that I’m not a crazy person”

As Patrick Korellis remembers it, he arrived at the college support group in 2008 and introduced himself to the person standing closest to him, a young woman named Emily Haas. She was a junior at Virginia Tech, majoring in business. Korellis was a senior at Northern Illinois University, studying meteorology and geography.

They would later swap stories of the stereotypical college variety — about cafeteria food, campus life and their post-graduation plans — but first, Korellis and Haas connected over a horrific shared experience.

“So, you were shot too?” she said.

Two months earlier, Korellis had been in the front row of his oceanography class when a gunman burst into the lecture hall with a shotgun. Korellis ducked under his desk, waited for a pause between blasts and bolted for the door. He was hit in the back of the head and arm with shotgun pellets but managed to stagger out into the safety of the cold Midwestern winter. When he got to the hospital, he was bleeding and missing a shoe.

Haas could relate. One year before, she had been in French class when a gunman had walked in and killed the teacher. Haas huddled under her desk as her classmates were shot, and two…