Michigan State University was swarmed with police, ambulances and fear Monday night as an active shooter situation unfolded, with officials reporting three people dead and five others injured.
The school sent an alert at 8:31 p.m. telling students to “run, hide, fight” with a report of shots fired on the school’s East Lansing campus.
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, as a campus that had hours before been filled with shouts, sprinting and gunfire fell relatively quiet, leaders looked to what follows an attack and killings at a place of learning.
Speaking not long before 2 a.m. at a news conference, Interim Michigan State University President Teresa Woodruff said the school would move to emergency operations for two days. The time is intended for students, staff and faculty “to think, grieve and be together” after a “day of shock and heartbreak.”
“We are devastated at the loss of life,” she said. “Our campus grieves, we will all grieve. We will change over time. We cannot allow this to continue to happen again.”
Resources for coping will be accessible starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday at East Lansing Hannah Community Center at 819 Abbot Road, the Lansing State Journal reported.
The city of Lansing will also provide resources, along with MSU and East Lansing, said Lansing Mayor Andy Schor at the news conference.
A heavy police presence will remain on the sprawling banks of the Red Cedar over the next several days as crime scenes are processed and interviews are conducted, according to what officials told reporters Tuesday morning.
About 19,000 students live on campus. There will still be normal operations to make sure their needs, for food and the like, are met.
The suspect in the deadly Michigan State campus shooting, who later died at a Lansing location, was a 43-year-old man, Michigan State University Interim Deputy Police Chief Chris Rozman said at a news conference about 1:40 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 14.
He was not affiliated with the university, Rozman said. And they don’t know why he came to MSU.
Rozman previously said that, to his knowledge, the school had not received threats in the preceding days.
The suspect was alive and contacted by police before he shot himself, police said. Various searches of places related to the suspect are ongoing.
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