One more day in the US and a mass shooting must be reported again. At least four dead and at least five hospitalized injured, some in a state of extreme severity and in danger of losing their lives, was the provisional balance sheet of the shooting on the East Lansing campus of Michigan State University (MSU), a one of the largest in the United States with more than 50,000 students.
The authorities gave the confinement order and decided to close the premises because the police continued to search for the only gunman who fled. After midnight, Chris Rozman, deputy chief interior officer of the MSU police, reported that, in addition to the three fatalities, the alleged perpetrator had also lost his life, who shot himself with his own weapon, after holding a confrontation with the police.
“At this moment we consider that there is no longer any threat on campus, because we believe that I am acting alone, security confinement is no longer wanted,” he stressed.
The police officer said at dawn that they were still working with the identity of the alleged perpetrator. They did know that he was a 43-year-old black man who had no connection to the university. “We don’t know what he was doing here,” Rozman remarked. Therefore, they still could not establish the reason for this wrongdoing.
In another previous appearance, Rozman explained that the fugitive was a short, black man wearing a mask, dark pants, a jean jacket, red sneakers and a baseball cap. Shortly after they released the photograph of him in which an object, similar to a gun, is observed in his right hand.
The attacks occurred in two different scenarios. The event started in the so-called Berkey Hall, where the first shots were reported and where there were two deceased. The suspect moved to another nearby building, that of the student union called Unionn Hall, where there were more discharges, with one death. The uniformed officers were deployed and checked all the classrooms and premises in search of the alleged perpetrator and the location of possible more victims. Videos of people running, in full chaos, escaping from danger, ran on the internet.
The alert jumped around 8:18 p.m. when it was reported that several shots had been fired on the East Lansing campus. These facilities are located about 145 kilometers northwest of Detroit. Rozman warned that false news was spreading on social networks about more shootings or a series of points where the escapee had been sighted. “This information is not accurate,” he stressed.
MSU spokeswoman Emily Guerrant initially indicated that there was one death. “The suspect is on the run and we believe he is moving on foot,” she said. Rozman confirmed that the gunman did not use any vehicle, hinting that he may still be in the vicinity of campus. In fact, they found him lifeless near the student union building, although it was already off campus.
All people were also ordered to take shelter. “Run, hide, fight,” he said in a statement from the university.
At least 30 units of firefighters, ambulances and other emergency services went to the place, while in other places the uniformed escorted hundreds of students who seemed to have been in the sports hall at the time of this new armed incident, the umpteenth of an endless story.
Authorities urged people who were concerned about friends and family to stay away from the university complex until another order was issued. “It’s hard to do this when someone you love is on this campus or the one next to it,” Rozman said. “But it is much more dangerous to be in the area while the armed suspect is on the move and the police are conducting their operation to arrest him,” he added. There were hundreds of uniformed officers deployed to hunt him down. All educational and sports activities at the complex were suspended for 48 hours.
This event is one of the many mass shootings that have occurred on university campuses in the United States in recent decades. At the top of the list, in chronological order, is the mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin, recorded in 1966, when a former Marine killed 16 people.
This new tragedy in Michigan occurs just on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 students and teachers and injured 17 others.