Albany

Thomas Taglienti remembers like it was yesterday the moment when the terror began at 9:10 a.m. on Dec. 14, 1994 in Lecture Center 5 at the University at Albany uptown campus.

Classics professor Hans Pohlsander was five minutes into a lecture on Alexander the Great in "History of Ancient Greece." It was the last class before final exams. Everything seemed ordinary.

Taglienti, 20, of Farmingdale on Long Island, had transferred after two years studying mortuary science at SUNY Canton and switched his major to marketing and management at UAlbany. It was a bitterly cold day and he wore a red wool hat instead of his usual white skipper's cap that earned him a nickname: the Captain.

And then the heavy double doors at the back of the large lecture hall swung open unexpectedly. There was a creak and a shaft of sunlight shot through the opening.

Taglienti figured it was a tardy classmate, and he glanced back briefly.

But instead of walking down the center aisle steps to take a seat alongside the other students, the man who entered stood at the top of the stairs. He was carrying something bulky.

"Excuse me...are you in this class?" Pohlsander called out in a thick German accent to the man who remained motionless in the back.

The man dropped a large green duffel bag on the floor and removed a rifle. He said he was taking the class hostage.

"I wasn't afraid because it was almost too weird to be real," Taglienti said. "I thought it was a joke or some kind of psychological test."

And so it began, more than three terrifying hours with 37 students held hostage and a tense police standoff that left two students wounded, one seriously. Taglienti was shaken and had nightmares for weeks afterward.

Hostage-taker Ralph J. Tortorici, 26, of Guilderland, was a mentally ill military veteran with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorder who complained of hearing voices. He was a UAlbany senior majoring in psychology and an on-again, off-again student who had been under psychiatric care but had fallen through the cracks of the mental health system. He had exhibited erratic, threatening behavior on campus, but was never charged with a crime.

Tortorici put his fellow students through a terrifying ordeal, particularly for Jason McEnaney, 19, who was shot in the groin and abdomen during the rush to subdue the gunman.

Taglienti is now a 40-year-old middle school science teacher in Queens. He did not want the 20-year anniversary to pass unnoticed. UAlbany did not publicly acknowledge Sunday's anniversary. Nor did local law enforcement officials or lawyers involved in Tortorici's high-profile trial in Albany County. He was found guilty following a trial marked by Tortorici's bizarre rants about a Jewish conspiracy. The trial ended with a guilty verdict and a 20- to 47-year prison sentence for assault and kidnapping.

Legal appeals on Tortorici's behalf reached the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals. The case inspired a PBS Frontline documentary in 2002, "A Crime of Insanity." Tortorici had been an honors student and standout athlete at Mohonasen High School, was a state Golden Gloves boxing champion and received an honorable discharge from the Army National Guard after four years before his spiral into severe mental illness. After failed suicide attempts, his short, tortured life ended when he hanged himself in his cell at the maximum-security Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg on Aug. 10, 1999.

Perhaps the others preferred to forget or to let time march on, obscuring the past.

More Information 20 years after Ralph Tortorici took class hostage at UAlbany Contact Paul Grondahl at 518-454-5623 or email pgrondahl@timesunion.com See More Collapse

But Taglienti couldn't ignore it, and he had some things to say about crime and punishment involving people who suffer from mental illness. He also wanted to share his thoughts on the challenges of classroom security, and the large number of school shootings that have occurred in the two decades since Tortorici.

Taglienti offered a vivid first-person account of the hostage incident undimmed by the years. "He (Tortorici) was very muscular and had a haircut that was part mohawk, part mullet. He wore an aqua blue weight lifting shirt, camouflage sweatpants .... He looked like he knew how to use that high-powered hunting rifle," he said.

Tortorici told the professor to leave a few minutes after he entered the lecture center. "Tell security, call the governor and the State Police. I want them to know I'm here," the gunman told Pohlsander as he strode up the stairs and out the double doors in back.

Tortorici tied off the doors with a fire hose he pulled from a back wall.

Pohlsander raced to alert campus police, which set in motion a massive, multi-agency SWAT team response.

Tortorici ordered students, including Taglienti in the front row, to move tables, chairs and podiums at the front of the lecture center. He wanted to blockade two auxiliary doors that led from the hall to service tunnels beneath the campus podium. They complied with his commands.

"The women in the class were freaking out, crying and sobbing," Taglienti said. "It was really tense because he had started ranting about hearing voices coming from computer chips implanted in his head and penis, plus weird conspiracy stuff."

Nearly an hour had passed and the gunman said, "I know you guys have finals. I want everyone to study now."

Students took out notebooks and textbooks and tried to look busy.

Tortorici disappeared under a desk for long stretches and paced up and down the rows of desks, muttering to himself. At one point, he showed students a box of extra bullets for the high-velocity Remington hunting rifle he bought at Kmart in Rotterdam.

A SWAT team surrounded Lecture Center 5. Police tried to talk with Tortorici through a classroom computer system that included a microphone and speakers. "He got really belligerent and angry and started swearing at the cops," Taglienti said. "He demanded to talk with the state Legislature, the governor and the president. He demanded food and cigarettes."

A murmur of sobbing and crying rose.

More time passed and Taglienti saw McEnaney sliding surreptitiously behind chairs that blockaded the back doors. "He was pale and nervous and drawing attention to himself," Taglienti said.

Tortorici noticed the movement, pointed the rifle and yelled: "There are no heroes in here! No heroes!"

He ordered McEnaney to move to another area of the lecture center. About 30 minutes later, he told McEnaney to move again. As McEnaney walked down the aisle steps. Tortorici followed a few paces behind with the rifle. On the third step from the bottom, McEnaney swung around and grabbed the barrel of the rifle. Tortorici fired three rounds. One blew a chunk out of a step, one struck the back wall, narrowly missing a student, and a third struck McEnaney. There was blood. McEnaney held onto the barrel of the rifle.

Freshman Jason Alexander, a two-time All-American lacrosse defenseman, was the first to charge Tortorici and tackled him at the top of the stairs. Five others, including Taglienti, lunged at the scuffling men.

"Watch the knife!" someone yelled.

Tortorici pulled a hunting knife strapped to his right leg and slashed Alexander's arm.

The students unleashed a furious torrent of kicks and punches upon the gunman.

Yuki Akagi, a Japanese exchange student, untied the fire hose on the double doors and SWAT team members rushed in. "Get down! Get down!" they yelled.

Police removed Tortorici and the students were led to an adjacent lecture center. Food from Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken was waiting. Taglienti ate fistfuls of the fast food.

"I was starved. All that adrenaline," he said.

His dorm buddies made a large banner: "Welcome Back Hero." Taglienti felt like nothing of the sort.

"I didn't really talk about it after that," he said. He didn't discuss a recurring nightmare of being trapped in the lecture center. He never sought counseling. The nightmares went away.

Years passed. Life went on. But as the 20th anniversary approached, he started thinking about it again.

"I have no ill will toward Tortorici," he said. "He could have killed us all, but he didn't. What else did the guy have to do to get put in a psych unit?"

Taglienti thinks about those hours of terror in Lecture Center 5 each time his school practices a lockdown security drill. "I'm a little more prepared and calm after what I went through," Taglienti said. "School security is a big concern."

Last week, Taglienti contacted his old professor. It was the first time they talked in 20 years. "It happened a long time ago and is not on my mind much anymore," said Pohlsander, 87, who lives in an assisted living center in East Greenbush. He grew up in Germany, was conscripted into the German army as a teenager near the end of World War II, was taken prisoner by the British. After he emigrated to the U.S., he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.

"Did you think of jumping the gunman on the way out?" Taglienti asked him.

"That thought crossed my mind," Pohlsander said.

"Good thing you didn't," Taglienti said. "I just wanted to thank you."

The men spoke more and both agreed that Tortorici belonged in a psychiatric center, not a prison.

Taglienti said the talk with his old professor had a soothing effect.

"I feel like I'm finally moving on after 20 years," he said.

pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623 • @PaulGrondahl