Out of the nearly two dozen students asked since Sunday’s reported “Barn Party” shooting, only one student who was there has been willing to explain what he saw.

Rich Guss, a senior theatre arts major, said 20 minutes after arriving at the warehouse on West State Street, located near the Northwest Business Park, for the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity hosted party, multiple fights broke out and soon after that he heard gunshots.

“It was pretty much a brawl,” he said.

Guss added there was a security presence at the party, but he did not know whom they were affiliated with.

“You knew security was there, you knew they were trying to just calm everybody down,” he said. “It didn’t – at first – seem like too big of a deal. It’s a party, fights happen. But there was quite a large fight that happened.”

Because of the amount of people attending the party and the lack of light, Guss said he did not know whom the fight was between or how it started.

“There was 1,000 people there, you know. So to pinpoint who started it, you can’t,” he said. “I’m sure somebody knows who it was between. But for the other 800 of us who don’t know, it’s just like we’re caught in the middle.”

The amount of people in the warehouse was also cause for one of the side doors to be opened to let those attending “spill out,” Guss said.

About five minutes after the side door was opened, he began hearing gunshots.

“At least seven,” he said. “Some here, some there.”

Guss said after the gunshots, people began dispersing into the street, ditches and under cars.

“I ran away, of course, and I lost the two friends that I actually came there with,” Guss said. “You know, chaos.”

He also said because of growing up in the South Side of Chicago, he and gunshots have become familiar.

“I purposely don’t go home, don’t go back to Chicago because of the violence there,” Guss said. “And I most definitely don’t come here to have to deal with it.”

However, despite being surrounded by violence, Guss said he has not been deterred from going anywhere.

Shortly after the gunfire, Guss said the first wave of police officers arrived.

“It was speedy. They got there in a nice amount of time,” he said. “When they first got there they handled the situation well.”

Guss said he was appreciative of how the first group of officers took care of the partygoers, but the second wave presented him with issues.

He said an officer yelled at him as he was trying to leave after the second wave blocked off the street.

“I’m not going to say I don’t understand how a person can be upset when something like this happens, especially in their hometown, especially when things like this don’t normally happen. It can be downright maddening,” he said. “For those of us who had nothing to do with it and were having a good time, and just a couple of people decided to ruin it for everybody, we didn’t deserve that.”

Guss has been going to Phi Beta Sigma hosted “Barn Parties” since his freshman year at Eastern.

He said – until the gunshots – he thought this year’s party was the safest one.

“The purpose has never been to fight for this reason or another,” he said. “It was probably over something idiotic, but it happened.”

Before even getting to the party, Guss said he met at the strip mall’s parking lot on Lincoln Avenue to be picked up by the bus.

Guss said before anybody was let onto the buses they were patted down to make sure they did not bring any kind of alcohol container with them.

The next morning, Guss returned to the parking lot to go to Magic Wok and found the mess that had been created.

“I was a little embarrassed. For what, I’m not really sure,” he said. “Maybe because no one took the initiative to at least try and clean up.”

Bob Galuski can be reached at 581-2812 or rggaluski@eiu.edu.