ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A St. John Fisher University student shared the text to her partner while she was in lockdown on campus.

Cindy Ramos wrote “If anything happens I love you.”

The university was in lockdown for five hours as deputies, troopers and campus security looked for a man accused of attacking a staffer with a knife.

“The natural reaction I had was that this is happening and the unknown is occurring,” Ramos said in an interview with News10NBC Thursday.

Ramos was at Fisher for her regular Wednesday night class. That’s when the text alert came, the school was in lockdown.

“There was still that unease because we didn’t know where that person was, not knowing that they weren’t in custody in any way, was still unnerving,” she said. “But I think having the support of my professor and colleagues really helped knowing we were all in this together and we were as safe as possible.”

After she moved from her classroom to a more secure room on campus, Ramos shot video when police finally came to the room she was in.

Deputy: “Hello.”
Cindy: “Hi.”
Deputy: “Nobody has been in and out right?”
Cindy: “No. Not here.”

Police searched eight separate buildings on the campus in Pittsford.

“Our resources were searching every building, going door to door,” said Monroe County Sheriff Chief Deputy Mike Fowler.

Fowler took time to acknowledge the panic that parents felt last night after they got the lockdown alert.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s terrible that we have to live in a society like that and we have to face these fears.”

The lockdown was lifted when the sheriff’s office and campus security as confident the suspect, Shalom Mathew, had left campus. He was eventually arrested on Jefferson Road in Henrietta shortly after midnight.

Brean: “At some point it must have dawned on you that you are now doing what you’ve seen so many other students have to do with these threats on campus, texting your friends and loved ones that you’re okay.”

Cindy Ramos: “It’s really hard like you really don’t know what to say especially not knowing the situation or if it’s going to be the last. All I could really say and do was just stay calm and let them know that I was present and that we were doing the best we could in that situation we were in and that I was safe at the time.”

Ramos told me she didn’t text her family in New Jersey until the lockdown was lifted. She said she didn’t want to panic her mother.