By Sophia Lada, Sam Easter, Julie Bosman and Jacey Fortin
Authorities on Tuesday identified two victims of a gunman who killed three Michigan State University students and badly wounded five others late Monday, in shootings that set off a three-hour police search and forced scared students to hide in dormitories and classrooms on one of America’s largest college campuses.
The suspected gunman, who lived in nearby Lansing and had no apparent connection to the university, was found off campus after a tip from what the university’s police chief described as “an alert citizen,” just 17 minutes after authorities released photos of the suspect. The suspected gunman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
A threatening note found in his pocket led school officials in a New Jersey community hundreds of miles away to cancel classes Tuesday. And students, faculty members and neighbors in Michigan remained shaken after the shooting, which prompted an email from the university urging people on campus to “Run. Hide. Fight.”
Here are the details:
— The victims who were killed were shot in an academic building and in the nearby student union. Officials identified two of them as Brian Fraser, a sophomore from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and Alexandria Verner, a junior from Clawson, Michigan. They withheld the identity of the third person who was killed at the request of the victim’s family.
— Chris Rozman, the interim deputy chief of the university’s Police Department, identified the suspected gunman as Anthony McRae, 43. “We have no idea why he came to campus,” Rozman said.
— A note found in the suspect’s pocket “indicated a threat to two Ewing public schools,” the police department in Ewing Township, New Jersey, said in a statement, adding that McRae had ties to Ewing but had not lived there for several years.
— The five students who were wounded in Michigan were in critical condition Tuesday and were being treated at a nearby hospital, officials said.
— Teresa Woodruff, interim president of Michigan State, said classes at the university would be canceled until Monday morning, and other operations were on a modified schedule.
— Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who represents the district that includes Michigan State, noted at a news conference that it has been a little over a year since a mass shooting at a high school in Oxford, Michigan, that killed four people, and that some graduates of Oxford High were now attending Michigan State. “We have children in Michigan who are living through their second school shooting in under a year and a half,” she said.