After meeting the date of Monday May 4th 11:00 am was planned for the beginning of the protest. On May 2nd an attempt was made to burn down the ROTC building on campus and local bars had shut down early to avoid a violent situation many of the local students began to loot local stores downtown. During the attempted burning of the ROTC building many of the firemen who came to extinguish the flames had been assaulted by the crowd. In reaction to these events Governor Rhodes asked for state level assistance to help calm down the rising tensions. The state guard was dispatched to calm down the situation. The guard that had been dispatched had already recently been involved in a violent protest in Akron and most of them were apprehensive about getting involved in another potentially hostile situation. After setting up a camp across the street from the University and began waiting for the crowd to start amassing.
Although many of the students were not planning to attend the protest, some started to show up out of pure curiosity along with the others who were going to be involved. A large crowd began to form in the common. Among the crowd the more politically motivated students began taunting and harassing the guardsmen. Although un-phased by the actions of the crowd, the guardsmen decided to regroup and return better equipped for the potential uprising. When the guardsmen returned wearing full riot gear they began shooting canisters of teargas into crowd, but the students began hurling them back at the guard. After a short time of confusing events an officer in the guard allegedly swung his right arm towards the crowd with his revolver in hand, because the guard was in full gear verbal commands became hard to use. The guard allegedly took this as a command to open fire, and a thirteen second barrage was unleashed into the crowd. In the aftermath of the barrage two students involved in the rally were killed instantly, while two others who were changing classes lay fatally struck by stray bullets.