Quincy Harding Jr. was waiting for his math class to start Thursday morning when he heard gunshots and screaming at a neighboring building on the Umpqua Community College campus in Roseburg, Ore.

“The only thing on my mind was getting out of there as fast as possible,” said Harding, a former Harrison High School basketball player who was in his first week of class at the Oregon college.

He was certain the gunman would come to his building – about 100 feet away from where the rampage occurred.

Harding had to stay put in a classroom with the other students. His professor told them to lie on the floor, in case gunshots came through the windows. He texted his dad in Colorado Springs and told him he was safe at that point.

As Harding was locked inside the classroom for nearly two hours, chaos erupted inside nearby Snyder Hall. The first call of a campus shooting went to police at 10:38 a.m., according to reports. Chris Harper Mercer, 26, is suspected of killing nine people and wounding seven, law enforcement officials told reporters. The gunman died after an exchange of fire with officers.

Harding, 19, didn’t know the grim details until later. He was scared and felt helpless. He kept family and friends posted through social media and text messages. But the updates didn’t always come in a timely manner.

“He posted something on Facebook,” his younger brother, Quinzel, said in a Facebook message. “Then I messaged him and he didn’t respond, which put all of us to a panic.”

It turned out that Quincy Harding Jr. and the other students in his classroom would be OK.

He is still shaken, though. In a phone interview Friday, Harding said he was planning to catch a flight home to Colorado Springs – where he was born and raised – by Friday night to be with his family and friends again. His basketball coach at the Oregon junior college told him and his teammates that they could take some time off from school but are expected to return Wednesday.

“I just want to get away in the coming days,” Harding said Friday. “It’s kind of hard being out here after what happened yesterday.”

After graduating from Harrison in 2014, Harding attended Otero Junior College in La Junta to play basketball. He decided to transfer to Umpqua this year. On Sept. 12, he moved to Roseburg, a small Oregon timber town about 180 miles south of Portland.

This was his first week as a college sophomore at his new school.

“I never thought it could happen,” Harding said. “It’s such a small town. All the people here are really nice and I never thought nothing like this could happen.”

He paused for a moment.

“It’s something you can’t really avoid,” he said. “It’s not your choice.”