BATON ROUGE - A group of LSU entomology students and professors gathered outside of Tipsey McStumbles in Augusta, Georgia. Outside, the sound of gunshots was loud and clear; inside, the normal sound of a livened Irish pub.

After a full day of presentations at the Southeastern Branch of the Entomological Society of America Meeting — an entomology conference — LSU students and professors went out to celebrate with drinks. According to eye witnesses, four to five professors and students waited outside while one student and a professor went inside the pub. Two LSU graduate students, Danyal Khan and Carlos Rivera, were shot.

"I was standing right next to them when they got shot on either side of me," said Blake Wilson, an entomology professor at LSU.

One student, Rivera's labmate, said the pub's door flew open and the group rushed in.

"One of the students (Rivera), who (was) shot, screamed, 'They shot me!,'" Tyler Musgrove said, a PhD student at LSU. "I noticed he was bleeding from his leg. I screamed '911' and I told him to lay down on the ground ... I could have been 10 seconds away from both of my children not having a daddy anymore, but in the moment, I was focused on helping Carlos."

The bullet pierced Rivera's upper right leg, leaving him a deep flesh wound that did not require stitches or even surgery. Wilson said he heard about five to seven bullets fired, but only two met skin. When WBRZ talked to Rivera on Friday, his classmate was taking him to get a new iPhone at the Apple Store — his old phone, which sat in his front right pocket, was shattered by the bullet, glass stained with blood.

"When I look behind me, I see my labmate, Danyal," Rivera said as he recalled the event. "He was bleeding from his hand, and I start screaming to the other people to close the door, and then I look down, and my pants were with a lot of blood. I start feeling the pain, and we were very scared."

Wilson and Musgrove have no idea where the bullets came from.

"Out of the dark, we heard shots kind of ringing out without seeing nobody else on the street. We never saw the shooter, it was just totally random," Wilson said.

"It was just like fire, gunfire from the shadows basically," Musgrove said.

The bullet punctured Khan's arm and shattered his bones, requiring emergency surgery and plates and screws, according to classmates. The group of labmates — around six in total — drove to Augusta. When Rivera was released from the hospital, he had nowhere to go but back to the hotel. His classmates took shifts taking care of him throughout the remainder of the trip.

Khan and Rivera flew back to Baton Rouge, Khan arriving around 12 a.m. Friday, according to one classmate. The two international students — Khan from Pakistan and Rivera from Honduras — returned to their home away from home with supportive arms.

Their professor, Wilson, created a GoFundMe with the goal to raise $50,000 for his two students. He said he knew the graduate student insurance would not cover the out-of-state medical costs, and he wanted to help. Wilson created the page on Thursday, and within one day, they had reached over $20,000 of their goal.

"I don't feel anymore that they are just friends, I feel like they are family now," Rivera said, choked up. "I feel supported."

Musgrove said after the shooting, the students started to process together what had happened: it had brought them all together.

"When it came time to look out for our own, we really stepped up together."