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OGDEN — A woman who was shot three times and survived the Virginia Tech shooting will speak at the Ogden-Weber Tech College Monday and introduce an app she created as a result of her experience.
Washington, D.C., resident Kristina Anderson was injured in the shooting that killed 32 people on April 16, 2007. The shooting on the Virginia Tech campus became the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, according to CNN. Anderson was in a classroom where 11 students and a teacher were killed, and she was shot twice in the back and also on one of her toes.
“That is going to drastically change what one does in life and for work and all that,” Anderson said. “This completely shifted my thoughts on everything from life to security to purpose. Before, I was heading down the course to going to law school and one thing I learned was that I had to find true purpose and meaning in my work. With more shootings after that, it hurt personally.”
Anderson took her experience and teamed up with another victim of a crime, Shy Pahlevani, to create an app to allow people to quickly alert police to an emergency situation. The LiveSafe app was launched in 2013 and allows people to send a message to police with pictures, audio and video evidence. It allows people to chat with police and can quickly transfer the user’s contact information and location. The user can also choose to remain anonymous.
We had an incident with a couple of students recently and we told them about the app and told them if they felt unsafe about anything they could notify security. You could just see them visibly relax and think, 'Okay, now there is something I can do.'
–Rhonda Lauritzen, Ogden-Weber Tech College
“It’s kind of like texting 2.0,” Anderson said. “It’s more of a multi-layer approach to texting. They are sending more of a toolkit of information. So if you are actually in a situation and want (police) to know where you are, it can send the location.”
The LiveSafe app has been utilized in college campuses throughout 19 different states. Ogden-Weber Tech College vice president for student services Rhonda Lauritzen decided to bring the app to Utah in August.
“Student success is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning,” Lauritzen said. “It’s the thing that’s exciting that we love to spend time on, but safety is the thing that keeps me up at night. The only thing we can do for safety is prepare before something happens and do our best to prevent something from happening.”
Lauritzen said Anderson’s presentation will be part of the launch of the LiveSafe app to be utilized by the students on campus.
“We had an incident with a couple of students recently and we told them about the app and told them if they felt unsafe about anything they could notify security,” Lauritzen said. “You could just see them visibly relax and think, ‘Okay, now there is something I can do.’ ”
Anderson will give her presentation of the app and her experience during the shooting on Monday at 2:30 p.m. in the Room Cross Hall of the Barker Family Health Technology Building.
The LiveSafe app is free and is available for iPhone and Android.
