Almost five years to the day after the infamous “Parkland shootings,” three college students were killed and five injured Monday night when a man opened fire on a college campus in Lansing, west of Detroit in the United States, before police officers called fled.
“We have three confirmed deaths. This is in addition to the five victims who were hospitalized in serious condition, university police tweeted. The condition of four injured required surgery. The fifth was taken to intensive care.
UPDATE: The suspect has been located off campus. He apparently died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The campus is no longer threatened and the shelter-in-place has been removed. pic.twitter.com/6s2KGvoKpV
— MSU Police and Public Safety (@msupolice) February 14, 2023
The suspect opened fire just after 8 p.m. local time (2 a.m. French time) at a building called Berkey Hall, where he killed two people, before walking to another building, that of the “Union,” where gunshots were also heard heard and a victim was found, acting campus police chief Chris Rozman said at a news conference. Police found no motive for the shooting three hours after the incident, he said, and the university was not aware of any threats against the campus.
A manhunt was launched by law enforcement, who arrived en masse, urging students, faculty and residents of neighborhoods around campus to “take shelter on the spot.” East Lansing is a sprawling public university center with nearly 50,000 students, mostly undergraduates, ie ages 17 and up. Initially suspended for 48 hours, all courses have been suspended until next Monday.
Classes and activities suspended until Monday
During the hunt, Michigan police released two stills of the suspect, taken from a surveillance camera, showing a short black man entering a building, then walking up a short flight of stairs, wearing a denim jacket, black pants, red sneakers, a baseball cap and a black mask covering the lower part of his face. It was the release of these photos that allowed a resident to report where McRae was in town
Michigan police have released two pictures of the shooter. About Portal
Rozman said the suspect “was eventually contacted by law enforcement off campus.” About four hours after the violence began, his death was confirmed from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had his gun with him. “The campus is no longer threatened. We believe there is only one suspect in this incident,” he added. The lockdown was lifted just after midnight. All courses and activities have been suspended on campus for 48 hours.
The man is said to be 43 years old, he was neither a student nor an employee of the university, according to initial information. Anthony Mc Rae – the police gave his name this Tuesday morning – was known to the police: In November 2019 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing a loaded firearm in his vehicle. He was released on parole in May 2021. “We’re trying to figure out why this incident happened,” Rozman said at a second news conference.
The shooting came about 14 months after a fatal November 30, 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in Oakland County, Oakland, about 130 miles east of East Lansing, in which a 15-year-old student opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol. In this attack, four classmates were killed and six students and a teacher were injured.
Most importantly, this Monday night murder comes on the eve of Parkland’s memorial. On February 14, 2018, a 19-year-old boy with an assault rifle killed seventeen people for no reason and injured fifteen others at a high school in Parkland, Florida. The shooter, Nicolas Cruz, was a former college student. After the shooting, at least two survivors committed suicide. Other alumni of high school found redemption in their March for Our Lives movement to control gun proliferation across the United States, and have managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of protesters each year ever since.
After three months of a grueling trial, Cruz was sentenced to life in prison last October to avoid the death penalty.