Emma called Riddle, a 45-year-old engineer, from the band room at Oxford High when the gunfire broke out there, and then from her dorm in East Lansing on Monday night.
Riddle drove his daughter back to Oxford early Tuesday. Emma plans to return to Michigan State on Sunday night.
Riddle said his daughter is, unfortunately, equipped to deal with the reopening of school after a mass shooting.
“It sucks to even say this, but she knows what’s coming over the next few days and how to deal with her trauma and what’s going to happen with vigils and the folks who are experiencing it for the first time,” Riddle said.
Andrea Ferguson, whose daughter is also an Oxford H.S. alum and current MSU student, told NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit that she “never expected in my lifetime to have to experience two school shootings.”
“It was like reliving Oxford all over again,” she said. “The phone call, the word shooting, shooter, it was surreal.”
The Oakland County Sheriff Department — which responded to both shootings — took note of the horrific repeat of violence and said in a Facebook post: “We also know that this will be a terrible flashback for our Oxford community, especially those students that graduated from Oxford high school and now attend MSU.”
Jennifer Mancini told the Detroit Free Press that her daughter, a former Oxford High School student and now a freshman at Michigan State, was across the street from the student union when gunfire erupted Monday night.
The terrified student called her mother.
“She said, ‘Mom, I hear gunshots … What’s going on?’ “Mancini told the newspaper.
The daughter, who transferred from Oxford before the 2021 shooting, told her mother she wants to come home.
“I can’t believe this is happening again,” said Mancini. “She said that she had PTSD. She said she can’t believe this is happening again.”
Then-Oxford student Ethan Crumbley gunned down four schoolmates at the campus about 45 miles north of downtown Detroit.
Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the shootings, pleaded guilty to all charges against him in October.
The Oxford shooting drew national attention, not just for the killings, but also for the prosecution of the shooter’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, who are accused of ignoring warning signs that might have led to the deadly rampage.
They’ve been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and have pleaded not guilty.
Madelyn Urabe contributed.