Eva Erickson is a doctoral candidate and engineering and thermal science student at Brown.
An Eagan native who was a runner-up on “Survivor” says she left the building mere moments before a shooter dressed in black killed at least two people and wounded nine others at Brown University on Saturday during final exams on the Ivy League campus.
Eva Erickson, an engineering and thermal science student, said she left her lab in the same building minutes before shots rang out.
“I am so so extremely lucky that I was very unproductive at work today,” she posted in an Instagram story while she was locked down in a gym while authorities looked for the shooter.
Around 4 p.m. Erickson said she thought, “Man, I’m just not getting anything done … and randomly decided I would go to the gym. I never go to the gym in the afternoon. … I was leaving the building within five minutes of the shooter coming in.”
In another post on her Instagram account, Erickson told people she was safe.
“I am safe!!” Erickson wrote. “Yes, my office at Brown is in the building of the shooting but I was very lucky I left my lab 15 minutes prior to the active shooter alert to go to the gym. I’m currently locked in the school gym sheltering in place until the shooter is (apprehended). The only other member of my lab working in the lab today has safely been evacuated.”
A person of interest in connection with the shooting was in custody Sunday.
The doctoral candidate was a runner up on the CBS TV reality show, “Survivor 48,” which debuted in February of 2025. Erickson was the show’s first openly autistic contestant and shared candid moments with viewers.
In an interview with the Pioneer Press, she said, “I didn’t go onto ‘Survivor’ to try to create this platform to speak about autism. It’s just part of my life. …The world has a lot of misconceptions about autism right now, and it is so important for people like me to share my story so that we can clear those up and help open this conversation and recognize that autism is not something wrong with you, but it is something that is special and unique, and it makes you who you are. It might give you challenges that are different than other people, but it also gives you strength.”
Erickson graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022 and was the first and only female player on the school’s hockey team. She’s currently pursuing a PhD at Brown University School of Engineering, where she’s captain of the men’s club hockey team.
The attack Saturday afternoon set off hours of chaos across the Ivy League campus and surrounding Providence neighborhoods as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter and urged students and staff to shelter in place. The lockdown, which stretched into the night, was lifted early Sunday, but authorities had not yet released information about a potential motive.
Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said Sunday afternoon that the person in custody was in their 20s and that no one has been charged yet. Perez, who earlier had said the person was in their 30s and that no one else was being sought, declined to say whether the detained person had any connection to Brown.

Police have detained a person of interest, a man in his 20s, in connection with a shooting that killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University Saturday.
Police have detained a person of interest, a man in his 20s, in connection with a shooting that killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University Saturday.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez confirmed the detainment and little else at a press conference Sunday afternoon inside a fire station a few blocks from where the shooting took place.
Perez declined to comment on whether a weapon had been found or the person of interest had any connection to Brown or Rhode Island in general.
“I have a responsibility to the integrity of this investigation,” he said, adding that it was important to “stand on grounded facts, not speculation.”
Investigators including city, state, and federal officers, are currently collecting and seizing relevant evidence.
Individuals wearing Federal Bureau of Investigation shirts and jackets and latex gloves walked in and out of Barus and Holley, the building at Brown where the shooting took place. The parking lot next door which is often empty was filled with tactical vehicles from different agencies.
According to several students who were on campus during the shooting, the incident took place in a classroom during an introductory economic course’s study session with in the engineering building, which hosts both lab space and amphitheater style classroom meant for large classes and lectures.
No one has been charged, but officials indicated that they would like to bring state rather than federal charges against any alleged shooter.
Perez said that information was moving quickly and that he felt better about the investigation Sunday afternoon than he had at midnight.
“My goal is that we’re able to have that information as soon as possible,” he told the press.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said that justice in this case will hopefully come from a prosecution and that to avoid jeopardizing the case, they would not have additional updates on the investigation until they had concrete information.
Smiley said that he did speak to four of the victims at the hospital since the shooting. One victim is in critical but stable condition, seven are in stable condition, and one victim has already been released.
Authorities have yet to identify the victims, who are all students, because some of the families are still in transit and have not been notified.
The mayor said he was inspired by the students who were facing the horrific situation so bravely. Although he said he wouldn’t comment on the policy changes he thinks should be implemented to prevent something like this from happening again – “not today,” he said – Smiley did express sadness that incidents like this happen “so damn often.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson spoke briefly at the presser, saying that she’d just talked to students in the school’s main cafeteria.
“They’re amazing,” she said, before her voice caught in her throat and she started to tear up.
Future press conferences will likely take place at the Providence Police Headquarters across the city.
Mayor Smiley also invited all members of the community to join in a Menorah/Tree lighting at Lippitt Park on the East Side of Providence at 5 p.m.