"This couldn't be real."

That was the first thought in Mathew Downing's mind as he watched a gunman walk into his classroom at Umpqua Community College, in Roseburg, Oregon, and begin to shoot people.

But Downing was spared from the Oct. 1 rampage, he said in a newly released statement obtained by OregonLive and USA Today, because the gunman gave him an envelope, told him to give it to the police and then let him live.

"It was about 30 or 40 minutes into the class when I heard a couple of shots fired, I couldn't hear anything when he had walked in because my ears [were] ringing so badly," Downing wrote in the statement, released Friday night – his first public comments about the shootings. "When I saw the gun when he walked in the first thought in my head was that this couldn't be real."

"He looked directly at me and said, 'Hey kid with the glasses you are the lucky one, I will not shoot you if you give this to the cops,' " Downing continued. "I stood up and he pointed the gun at me and this is the moment I thought I was going to die.

"He paused for a second and then handed the envelope to me and said to sit in the very back seat and face him.

Downing's 734-word statement outlines in detail the frequency of the violence in that classroom, which killed nine and wounded nine more, and helps piece together previously reported fragments.

Downing's statement also confirms previous reporting that the gunman singled out some of the victims because they said they were religious.