(Trigger warning) We had to escape through the window…..

This happened two weeks ago. I am posting from Ireland and studying at UCD in Dublin, and am currently back home in Cork as I was one of the four people involved and am taking the subject matter seriously. UCD is an international university and every student from China is being sent home to quarantine. I got the all clear so I’m just at home studying. I am also an international student from South Korea and this isn’t the first time I have been in Ireland so I know my way around. I’m 25 years old and can handle myself but I have never been more scared in my life.<br><br>I had a night with some new friends last week. We had been chatting about the virus in class and how it isn’t being taken seriously. We all agreed to make sure everyone is safe and more or less went back to our day as it passed. We agreed to meet up to drink and read through some notes for an exam and were just randomly chatting. <br><br>These are students I had just become friendly with and eventually we became comfortable enough to go to one of their homes in a ‘student residence’ (I don’t know if it’s the same in America but in Ireland and Korea it is basically a house full of students…as opposed to a dorm). It was a five bed semi-detached house. We were raging when we heard there was no lock on the front door. It was a small three story house but one of the students said it wasn’t a problem as nothing really goes missing in these houses and there was never a safety issue. There was another female student staying in the house but she was in a relationship with one of the guys so it was all good. There was one more guy staying in the house that we were all unaware of. I had never met him or seen him but I wasn’t staying there so I didn’t think much of it. <br><br>There was a small kitchen downstairs and then a sitting room. The doors were locked to both so we didn’t really think much of it. The stairs went straight up to a landing where there were two bedrooms. There was one bathroom and a small balcony looking out onto the back garden so we could go outside for some air if we needed to. We were in one of the bedrooms. <br><br>At around 4am we were all intoxicated and exhausted so the two boys went to sleep in the other room. I was staying in the same room as them but both girls went to sleep. I was just sitting in a chair scrolling through my phone doing nothing. We had all been chatting and laughing and it was really fun. <br><br>The last we saw of the boys was when they went to sleep. I’m not sure what time it was exactly but after they went to sleep one of the girls came back into the room like she had seen a ghost. She was fully dressed and holding her phone and two small bags. It was weird because we were all in pyjamas. She came in and whispered to me in Korean. She was very scared and I was wondering why she was speaking in Korean so I figured it was about one of the guys so I replied back. She said that she had went to the bathroom and when she was finished she saw one of the doors to the kitchen or sitting room open slightly. She said she pushed it open and saw one of the boys that lived in the house that we didn’t know about, the boyfriend, the two friends I was with and herself all dead or close to it on the floor. There was some blood but it looked more like they had been suffocated. She said there was a guy standing in the kitchen wearing a mask and gloves, crying and looking all around the kitchen. He had a small kitchen knife and was holding a phone. She said he was convulsing and did not see her so she slowly went back to the bathroom and came back to the room we were in. She said she saw him going into the sitting room which is why she had her bags and was ready to go. <br><br>I was so shocked and drunk but she looked so scared so I knew it was true. We were both looking around the room and there was no lock on the door. We could see the stairs from the window and the guy was on the ground floor. It was all wooden stairs so we would be found immediately if we tried to go down. The garden on the back of the house was the only way out. The guy was in the sitting room and one of the doors to the back garden was in the kitchen and the other through the sitting room through a long room. Both options were impossible. <br><br>The girls were still asleep, drunk, with their bags next to them. We both knew that if they woke up they would just scream. We were shit faced drunk and this was still all surreal. We knew we had to get them out the window and into the back garden. We slowly went over to them and held them. We sat them up and held them. They were slightly awake but not really, and because they were so drunk they just thought it was fun. They were giggling and asking what we were doing and why. We slowly stood them up and held them by the arms and slowly made our way to the window. <br><br>The window was not locked but the screen was. We slowly took it off and put it on the floor. We took the bags and threw them into the back garden. It was about 10 steps down to the garden. One of the girls fell to her knees and the other fell onto the bed laughing. We struggled to get them up again and they just fell straight back down. I was trying to hold one of them up while opening the window and trying to balance without waking the guy. The guy could have come up the stairs at any minute. We finally got them up and out the window. Both of them fell to the ground as we were trying to get them down slow. We threw the screen out the window and closed it. <br><br>I cannot explain how we felt. I was shit faced drunk and it was surreal but at the same time we were all looking at each other. It was all so crazy. We had thrown two girls out a window and were about to escape. I was looking up and down the stairs to see if the guy had come up but he was still in the sitting room. We went to the window and looked out into the garden. <br><br>The garden was big but we had to get to the person who owned the house on the left. There was a small fence but it was possible to get to the neighbors garden easily enough. We threw our bags out the window and then ourselves. It was an easy jump onto the floor. It hurt my ankles a little but it was fine. I was drunk anyway. When we landed on the floor we went to the girls that were already there. We tried to keep them quiet and helped them up to walk slowly through the garden. <br><br>The back garden was surrounded by a wall on two sides with a fence on the other two. We eventually reached the fence and we knew that if the guy came out at that time he would see us. It was around a 6 foot fence. We helped the girls over and got over ourselves. We were in the neighbors garden. We looked back and could see the back of the house. We could see the sitting room and the door to the back garden. We walked through the neighbors garden and into the front garden. It was so cold outside and none of us were wearing anything. We were wearing t shirts and shorts basically. We got to the front of the neighbors house and looked back. There was no one following us. We walked down towards the road in the neighbors garden and looked back. We finally looked at each other. We started talking and asking so many questions, what just happened, did that guy kill anyone, are they ok etc. We eventually got our phones and called the police. <br><br>We were all so intoxicated that they didn’t believe us at first. It took them around 20 minutes to come to where we were. They eventually came and took us to a station. They eventually broke into the house and found the guy and the bodies. They found the person who owned the house and her boyfriend dead in the kitchen and the two students dead in the sitting room. The guy who was wearing the mask was arrested and the fourth student was found alive but in a bad condition. <br><br>I’m not sure how much more information I can give out but the guy who was arrested was from China and was an engineering student. He was 27 and was staying in the house. He came back from China in January for the new semester. He had been quarantined in his room for the entire month of January. He had only been allowed to come and go as he pleased for a month. He was a very shy guy who spoke very little English. The house owner didn’t know much about him as he never came out of his room. He had a visa to be in Ireland until May. <br><br>The police investigation found that he was the one who killed everyone. The police are still unsure as to why he killed them. There is speculation that he was scared he would be sent back to China when they found out about the virus. I don’t know what to make of it. I just know that I got very lucky that night.