UW-Madison engineering professor Tom Lipo was leading a conference seminar on the Virginia Tech campus while a gunman was opening fire just two buildings away.
Lipo and the other UW students and faculty at that conference are now back in Wisconsin unharmed but with vivid memories of the tragedy.
At first, Lipo says, their building was locked down following the dorm shooting that left two dead. They were told not to leave and stay away from the windows.
He says you could hear a pin drop when the group was told hours later about the massacre that left thirty other people dead in that nearby building.
Several members of that visiting UW team are meeting with grief counselors here.
Lipo says what scares him the most is that if something like this can happen in the small community of Virginia Tech and Blacksburg, VA then it can happen anywhere. Even at UW-Madison.
AUDIO: Reporter Jason Fischer and addional sound with Prof. Lipo ( :56 MP3)