Video: A Parent’s Nightmare

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LOUISVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)-It takes two lane roads and patience to get to Cleveland, and the campus of Delta State.

Highway 61, best known as a blues music trail, skirts Cleveland on its way from Memphis to VIcksburg.

The Delta town is about an hour from the interstate. And for families in North Mississippi, that’s just the beginning of the drive.

For students and their parents the distance on Monday felt especially far.

Parents always want to take care of their child especially when danger strikes.

But the reality is, they can’t always be there.

“I heard his ringtone and I went and answered it, and he said, mom, we’re locked in a room, and there’s a shooter on campus,”  Delta State parent Valerie Sullivan said.

“You never expect to get that call. Your heart stops for a minute and you feel like you’ve been sucker punched,” she said.

A force to be reckoned with on the football field, Monday Tyler was locked in a classroom directly across the street from where the shooting took place.

And it didn’t make things any better knowing she was 3 hours away from her son.

“You think about your child, but you also think about all of his friends, the kids from Winston County that are there, and the football team he’s associated with, and then all of the other kids we know at Delta State,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan was in constant communication with Tyler throughout the day.

She said Tyler kept a cool demeanor the entire time, which helped calm some of her nerves.

“I was worried sick all day, but he’s always handled things well. He always sees the big picture and I think had he been alarmed, it might have alarmed me more,” she said.

Sullivan said Delta State did a good job of responding to the situation.

And, she still feels safe with her son on campus.

“There’s really nothing you can really do, when they leave your house they’re in the world, and you just got to trust a greater power to protect them,” Sullivan said.
Tyler Sullivan took courses with both professors involved in the shooting. He describes both of them as kind hearted people who went out of their way to help him, which makes the incident even more shocking.

A vigil is planned for Schmidt tonight at 7 p.m on Delta State’s campus.