In the moments following a disaster, the landscape transforms: the known
becomes suddenly menacing, and people’s familiar habits glow with
unfamiliar significance. On Tuesday afternoon, Tawhid Kabir, a student
at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, was circling his school’s
campus, in Tribeca, when a transformation of the normal rhythm to his
school day occurred.

“I saw a guy with two guns running up the street. I ran toward the
Stuyvesant bridge. Students told me he was a shooter,” he told a group
of reporters clustered on the corner of Chambers Street and Greenwich
Street. A few minutes earlier, a man driving a rental truck had killed
at least eight people and injured a dozen others just a block away. The
street had become mobbed with police, journalists, and rubberneckers; a
line of yellow tape cordoned off Chambers, going west, and the fading
evening light was cut with light from flashing sirens. “Then there was
this other guy, not in a cop’s uniform, who was chasing him. We heard
gunshots, and we all went down—we were all scared. I didn’t see who was
shooting. After the gunshots, I see the guy with two gunshots is down.
The cops got him.”

Kabir is twenty years old. He wore a black letterman-style jacket over a
black-and-white graphic T-shirt, black skinny jeans, and hip brown
skateboarding shoes. His hair was parted on one side and folded across
his forehead in a swoosh. A somewhat wispy beard traced his jawline. He
was encircled by reporters, and looked captive. “I have to go to
class,” he said.

“And the two guns looked real or fake?” a reporter asked.

Another leaned into his face. “You saw the shooter?”

Kabir took out his iPhone and held it out. “He has video of the
shooter,” a reporter murmured. “Oh, my God.”

It was not yet wholly clear what had taken place. “Bunch of people shot
on the West Side,” a guard, on Centre Street, had boomed to a passerby.
Information at the corner where Kabir stood travelled by rumor, person to
person, as traffic guards herded people back from the curbs. “Five
people,” one rubbernecker said. “Bike path,” someone announced to the
crowd. Phone reception was going in and out from overuse. A woman in a
camel coat was trying to pick up her child at B.M.C.C.’s Early Childhood
Center, but its doorway was past the perimeter, and she couldn’t pass.
In a cool, overly patient tone, she worked to wheedle details of the
attack from a guard, who seemed to know none.

The huddle of reporters, impervious, bore down harder on Kabir. Their
task was to wrest what news they could out of the only resource at hand,
the people on the street. First on Snapchat, then, later, on YouTube,
Kabir had posted videos he’d taken of the moments after the attack.
Grainy, shaky, and shot from a distance, they were nonetheless some of
the clearest firsthand evidence of the incident.

“Would you mind e-mailing me your Snap story? Did you save it? Or
message?” one asked. “What’s your name?” a second inquired. Kabir
brandished his phone before him in a pose of defeat. Reporters
snapped photos of his Snapchat profile on their own phones, peppering
him with questions all the while. Kabir looked enviously at some other
B.M.C.C. students on the opposite corner, who were watching the
proceedings in a festive spirit. (“School’s still in session?” one
shrieked in delight. “Nah, nah, nah. We’re wildin’.”)

The print reporters started to fleck away from Kabir, satisfied, or
satisfied enough, with the information they’d gleaned, and a new wave
swarmed in, from the television news. “You’re rolling this way?” a guy
with a handheld mic asked, taking Kabir lightly by the arm.

“Actually, I’m going that way,” Kabir said, hitching his gray backpack
on his shoulders and turning around.

“Give me one second, please.” The reporter led him across the street and
positioned him in front of a camera. He put the microphone in his face.
“Tell me again your name. And tell me what you saw.”

Kabir repeated his story, polished for the second telling.

“When I got out of the main building of B.M.C.C., I saw there were
students looking at the street and I thought maybe there was an
accident, so I wanted to see what happened. I saw a guy in the street,
with two guns on him, and he was running in the street. I thought it was
a Halloween costume or something, so I didn’t pay any attention. I just
went to the bridge to see from there. And then the other students told
me he’s the shooter and the police were after him. Then I heard five or
six gunshots, and we were all scared. Then I came up to see what
happened. I saw the guy with two guns on the ground. The police had got
him.”

“What did you think?” the news reporter asked. “Could you play your
video one more time?”

A print reporter who’d been tagging along became irritated and cut in:
she had the video already. “Could I send it to you afterward?” she asked
the TV guy. “I’ll AirDrop it to you.”

“It will take two seconds,” the TV reporter snapped back, with tetchy
politesse. “Then I’ll get him back to you.”

“I really need to go to class,” Kabir said quietly.

“Thirty seconds!” the TV guy said, flashing a smile.

The print reporter grabbed Kabir and led him across the street again.
Back on his original corner, Kabir faced a new array of TV cameras.
“CNN,” a CNN reporter said. “So what—exactly—did you see?”

Kabir went through his account again—twenty seconds now narrated with
exquisite efficiency. He spelled his name three more times, then a
fourth. “The other students with me on the bridge?” he said, as if
suggesting an idea. “Those other students. They were scared. They were,
like, so scared. Really scared.” ABC News came up, and a new reporter
after that. “I actually have a class right now,” Kabir said.

“I’ll walk with you,” the reporter replied.

The crowds of rubberneckers began to thin. A child dressed as Spiderman
wandered up Greenwich Street, past police officers holding real machine
guns.

A fresh group of reporters encountered Kabir. “Tell me exactly what you
saw,” one said.