Nov. 1, 1991 – DI photographer

At the Field House, then-DI Photo Editor Michael Williams — now the director of photography at The Everett Collection in New York — was photographing a UI swimming meet when an Iowa City Press-Citizen photographer got a call on his beeper and told Williams about the shooting.

By the time they arrived at Van Allen, night had fallen, and it had begun to snow. All Williams had was the camera equipment he took to cover the swimming meet.

“I was ill-equipped and experienced to shoot a fast-breaking, hard news story, but I flashed away in the maelstrom of first responders as EMTs brought what we thought was one of the victims out of the building into a waiting ambulance,” he said.

Later, Williams found out the person in the ambulance was someone who had passed out from the turmoil. He also discovered, much to his surprise, that his younger brother, a student in the physics department, had been in the basement of Van Allen during the shooting.