At least three people were killed and five more critically injured after a gunman attacked Michigan State University on Monday night, campus police said. After a four-hour manhunt across a darkened, sprawling campus of 50,000 students, police confronted the gunman, with authorities saying he had apparently shot himself shortly after.
The gunman’s death was announced at a midnight press conference by Chris Rozman, a spokesperson for the MSU police. Rozman said the man died with law enforcement present on the scene, saying “the contact we had with the suspect was fluid and dynamic.”
Rozman said that two of the dead had been fatally shot at the Berkey Hall, while the final victim was shot at the nearby MSU Union.
At a 1:30 a.m. press conference, the suspect was identified as a 43-year-old male, who was not affiliated in any way with Michigan State University. His final showdown with police was in the city of Lansing, off campus. Details surrounding the events of the man’s death were not immediately clear.
The suspect wasn’t identified by name and his motive was also not immediately clear. “We have no idea why he came to campus tonight,” Rozman said.
All five of those injured remained in critical condition overnight—with police declining to identify any of the victims early Tuesday morning.
At the late-night press conference, Lansing Mayor Andy Schor attempted to sum up the situation in one sentence: “Tonight night has been horrific.”
Campus police at Michigan State University had ordered students to shelter in place immediately around 8:18 p.m. after shots were fired at Berkey Hall. “Secure-in-Place immediately. Run, Hide, Fight,” an initial email alert read.
“Hundreds” of law enforcement officers and agents, including state police, the FBI, and the ATF, then “descended” upon MSU to aid campus police over the course of the night, Rozman said.
A spokesperson for Sparrow Hospital, a facility less than four miles from campus, told The Daily Beast they had received five victims with “serious injuries.”
In an earlier press conference, Rozman confirmed that two shootings had occurred at two separate locations, and that one suspect—a lone gunman—had last seen been leaving the MSU Union on foot.
Rozman had said the gunman was believed to be a Black male, shorter in stature, wearing red shoes, a jean jacket, and a ball cap. Campus police later shared surveillance photos of the suspect, who appeared to be carrying a backpack. Surveillance cameras are expected to help investigators piece together the timeline surrounding the events of the night.
After the gunman’s death, Rozman said he could not comment on the type of weapon used on Monday night, nor whether the man had been carrying additional ammunition when he died.
“We are devastated by the loss of life,” a visibly emotional MSU Interim President Teresa Woodruff said during the late night press conference. “Our hearts hang heavy.”
Woodruff said the school will take two days to move to emergency operations “so we can think, and grieve and come together. This Spartan family will come back together.”
Wali Khan, an MSU sophomore, told The Daily Beast that he had taken shelter in a building on campus near the health center. He reported seeing neighbors covering their windows with blankets and sirens “buzzing like crazy” outside.
“I moved here a year and half ago and I’m just shocked this is happening but I’m not surprised,” said Khan, who is from Singapore.
He said he was tuned in to a police scanner, listening as dispatchers rattled off the names of buildings on campus. “I hang out at these places and just imagining blood on those floors make me sick.”
“Having to dread getting a call tomorrow about a friend being dead is not the way I wanted college to be,” Khan said.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, an MSU graduate, responded to the shooting in a tweet, saying in part, “Let’s wrap our arms around the Spartan community tonight. We will keep everyone updated as we learn more.”
She added later: “Tonight, Spartans will cry and hold each other a little closer. We will mourn the loss of beautiful souls and pray for those fighting for their lives in the hospital.”
Late on Monday, East Lansing Public Schools told the community that its schools would be closed on Tuesday in light of the shooting. Shortly after, the Michigan House of Representatives cancelled its Tuesday afternoon session. The State Capitol lies roughly four miles from MSU’s campus.
Several students on campus Monday had come to MSU as survivors of the Nov. 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan. In an interview with WDIV-TV, Andrea Ferguson, the mother of an Oxford graduate, said her daughter had started studying at MSU in January.
“It’s a surreal experience, to be honest with you,” Ferguson said. “I never expected in my lifetime to have to experience two school shootings… It’s absolutely unbelievably terrifying. But I have to say, once the reality kicked in, she knew what to do.”
In the midst of the search for the gunman, two female students told WXYZ Channel 7 that they were scared—but also intensely frustrated and fed up. “I can’t think; I can’t speak; I’m probably gonna wake up tomorrow and think this was a fever dream,” one said. “I genuinely have no words for this entire situation.”
“We have so many gun drills in high school but it was never real,” her friend said. “And it was never it was always soft lockdowns because it was like someone wrote something on the wall. But now it’s, like, real. And they didn’t even—The high school treated this with 10 times more urgency than [MSU authorities] are treating this.”
“Absolutely,” the first student agreed.
Monday night’s shooting came just ahead of the five-year anniversary of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which a gunman murdered 14 students and 3 staff members.
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