Dirigo High School graduate Natalie Keene said she was on her way to a class from the other side of the Virginia Tech campus when she learned students had been shot at her college Monday.

Keene, a senior at Virginia Tech, said she was shocked and saddened by the news that 32 students had been shot and killed but was relieved, to some degree, because the two other students from Maine that she knows are OK, too.

“It’s awful,” she said.

Keene said she grew up in Auburn but her family moved to Dixfield when she was a junior at Edward Little.

Keene, a dairy science major, was at the school’s dairy farm near the campus entrance and fairly far from the shooting area, she said.

Students were sent e-mails early in the day advising that there had been a shooting that was under investigation, but that classes were still on, Keene said.

But that all changed when, around 10 a.m., an announcement was made over the school’s emergency loudspeaker system. She said she was on her way to class on campus when the announcement was made. The system was installed to warn of dangerous weather events, Keene said.

“I never went onto the campus. We all just stayed at the dairy farm,” Keene said.

Keene said she and other students watched as emergency vehicles including police cars, ambulances and what appeared to be law enforcement SUVs rushed onto the campus.

Another Maine student at the school, Casey Marstaller of North Yarmouth, a friend of Keene’s, said she was in the building next to the one where most of the shootings had taken place.

Marstaller, a senior, said that at around 9:30 a.m. she and the other students in the class she was attending saw about four police officers, with guns drawn, chasing somebody.

“We could see out the back window of the classroom,” she said. “Someone kind of heard commotion, and everyone turned around and there were four officers yelling at someone to get down on the ground, and they all had guns.”

The students lost sight of what was going on, Marstaller said. “It kind of disappeared from our view,” she said.

The professor asked if any of the students had a laptop so they could find out what was going on. They were kept locked in the classroom for about three hours but were able to monitor what was going on by watching television news and by visiting the Internet, Marstaller said.

Katie Pike of Cornish, was safe in her dorm room during the shooting. Pike, a freshman at the school, is friends with Marstaller and Keene. All three are dairy science students, Keene said.

“I guess it’s hard to even put into words how it is,” Marstaller said. “It all just happened so fast, I think a lot of us are still, haven’t really … I personally am still shocked about the whole thing.”

The students said they didn’t know if the shooter was a student and had very little information about how the shootings occurred.

For the most part, she has felt safe in the town of Blacksburg, Va., where the school is located, Marstaller said.

She likened it to being much like the small towns in Maine where she and her friends grew up.

“Most of us would consider Blacksburg a small town,” Marstaller said. “We are a major part of this town,” she said of the college and its students.

Keene said a noon memorial service was being planned for today.

Natalie Keene’s mother, Debbie Keene, said she feels blessed that Natalie, is OK .

“The phone has been ringing off the hook since this morning,” she said. “So many people care. To know your son or daughter is there and you don’t know how they are must be terrifying.” said Debbie Keene.

She and her husband, Steve Keene, operate Conant’s Farm in Canton.

Staff writer Eileen Adams contributed to this report.

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