Photo: Naomi Nichols/iStockphoto.com

The four-block walk from the train station to her downtown Dallas law office on Tuesday was surreal for paralegal Julianna Gravois.

“I knew the same time I was walking yesterday, the guy was at the courthouse,” she said, referring to Monday's shooting at the Earle Cabell Federal Building, which houses the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas.

Gravois first mistook the loud sound outside for a jackhammer, which struck her as odd. When the popping noise came again she went to a window, and saw the shooter, wearing tactical gear and a ski mask, begin shooting into the glass door.

“I watched the whole thing,” she recalled. “It was just like 10, 15 or 20 shots, something like that, just in rapid succession. … Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.”

While Gravois had a bird's-eye view of the shooting from her firm's office in a building on Jackson Street catercorner to the federal building, Thompson & Knight partner Rich Phillips had a much more terrifying perspective.

Phillips was headed to court for a 9:30 a.m. trial in one of his cases, and around 8:40 a.m. when the shooting started, he was in his car and waiting to get into the parking lot where federal agents eventually shot down the suspect.

When he realized he was hearing gunshots, he scanned the area and saw the shooter running down Jackson Street, before opening fire.

“I saw bullets hit the side of the building. I could see puffs of smoke from the stonework,” Phillips said. “Then he got to the door and started firing into the glass.”

'I Was Breathing Hard'

None of it seemed real as Phillips ducked behind his dashboard. When he peeked back up moments later, the view was terrifying.

“He had turned from the door of the courthouse and crossed the street and was coming in the parking lot and was basically coming right towards me,” he explained. “For a second, I didn't know what to do. He didn't take but a few steps into the parking lot when he hit the pavement and dropped down. He kind of hit the ground and then rolled. I didn't know if he had been shot and that's why he hit the ground, or that he was trying to avoid getting shot and was going to crawl around and use the cars as a shield.”

Phillips' fight or flight response then kicked in.

“I put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway and took off down Wood Street. I remember feeling it took forever to get the car into gear, although I'm sure it was half a second or so. I was breathing hard and still trying to figure out what just happened,” he said.

Yet then, Phillips decided to turn around so that he could tell police what he had seen. They ushered him to safe locations several times, as law enforcement set up a command center. Eventually, police took his statement and he left the scene about 10 a.m. Because his car was inside police barricades, he walked across downtown to Thompson & Knight's office.

From paralegal Gravois' perspective looking out her firm's window, she saw something that Phillips did not: the moment when a group of heavily armed officers, walking behind rally shields, descended on the shooter and took him down. One plain-clothes officer even flew out of a car and went straight into the fray, she said.

“I was so impressed. It was crazy,” she said.

Later, Gravois and her colleagues heard a voice over their building's intercom telling them to retreat to the far side of their building, because police suspected a bomb could be in the shooter's vehicle. Later, she and the rest of the building's occupants were evacuated out of the entire building and set up a temporary office in a nearby hotel, she said.

“I was super, super shocked the whole time,” Gravois. said. “It's one of those things you feel you are watching it in a movie.”