Although the terror of the Washington D.C.-area sniper shootings was miles away from Charleston, Eastern alums experienced the fear of living among the shootings.

Four former students who live in the same area where the sniper shootings that left 10 dead and injured three occurred a few weeks ago said although they didn’t lock themselves indoors, fear did come into play.

“This guy was purposely frightening people going about their daily lives, which made me all the more determined not to give in to fright,” said Dru Sefton, alumna and national correspondent for the Newhouse News Service.

However, with each shooting, alums admit fear began to take over a little. Those who live in the suburbs of Washington said it hit home more because the shootings were occurring in their neighborhoods, like Alexandria, Va. where alumna Yvonne Beeler Folkerts and her family live.

“Suddenly, everyone realized doing mundane, everyday things was a challenge because one didn’t know where he may strike next,” she said.

As the shootings increased, more safety precautions were implemented, especially at schools where the threat to children existed.

“There’s something about targeting children that bothers everyone, I think (fear) is a very primal reaction,” Sefton said.

Folkerts said her children’s schools were on lockdown and outdoor recess, after-school activities and sports were halted. But Folkerts said she continued her life normally, letting her 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son play outside after school. Still, she said there were also people who reacted the opposite.

“There were a lot of people that were so scared they literally did not leave their homes for days,” she said.

Within their daily lives, small errands like gassing up the car became a tough and scary task. Folkerts said her and her husband bought gas in residential neighborhoods that didn’t have easy access to major roads and errands to stores in strip malls were limited.

Lori Miller Drummond, an alumna who lives with her family about a 15-minute drive from the first cluster of shootings, said the shootings hit especially close to home when friends of hers were in the same stores when the shootings occurred. She also said some victims were a lot like herself.

“The only safety precaution that seemed to work was to hide under the bed, and that wasn’t very realistic,” she said. “It became routine to see people trotting through parking lots or scrunching down at the gas stations.”

Alumna Leesa Willis said while normally she would choose the outside pump closest to the exit drive at a gas stations, during the shootings she chose the closest pump to the station and tried to put obstacles in the way of direct lines of sight.

“It was unnerving or unsettling,” she said. “Because of the randomness with which the snipers struck, you could not rule yourself out as a possible victim.

“We all discovered what it felt like to be sitting ducks.”

Although two men have been arrested as the alleged snipers, Drummond said many people in the area are still not at ease with the shootings.

“Many of my friends are still not over this,” she said. “It still feels a little like someone is watching