Michigan shooting 2023: Suspect dead after three killed and five wounded in MSU attack

“There are three confirmed fatalities,” in the shooting at Michigan State University said police. “This is in addition to the five victims who have been transported to the hospital.”

Police are seeking witness accounts to help them put together the sequence of events and investigate Monday night’s mass shooting.

The FBI, also involved in the case, said informants can reach the agency at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

A gunman opened fire Monday night at Michigan State University, killing three people and wounding five more, before fatally shooting himself miles away after an hours-long manhunt that forced frightened students to hide in the dark.

Students were released from a night of lockdown after the gunman allegedly died of a self-inflicted wound. Campus activities, however, will remain suspended for the next 48 hours.

Aidan Baldwin, a 19-year-old freshman from Waterford who was sitting in a pickup truck with his aunt and uncle, told the Wall Street Journal that he spent most of night locked in a bathroom with a roommate, calling friends to check on them, monitoring news and letting parents know he was safe.

“For the first half hour it was OK, but after it got to be two or three hours, it got pretty nerve-racking. It felt more real,” he said. Responding to the reports of the gunman’s death, Baldwin said: “It’s gonna sound bad but I felt kind of relieved, just that we could move around.”

Local television news footage taken during the door-to-door search showed students filing past heavily armed police outside campus buildings in the cold night air, their arms raised above their heads in an “active shooter” evacuation ritual that has become commonplace on US school campuses.

Alexis Dinkins, an MSU sophomore who was inside Akers Hall, a dormitory on campus, told the Detroit News she heard people barricading doors and shouting, “Go, go, go” as the incident unfolded.

As she and other fled the dorm, they encountered police who told them to go to a nearby bus stop.

“We don’t feel safe anywhere,” the Detroit News quoted her as saying as she stood with a group of students on a campus sidewalk after leaving Akers. She described the situation as “terrifying”.

Ryan Kunkel, 22, was attending a class in the Engineering Building when he became aware of the shooting from a university email.

Kunkel and about 13 other students turned off the lights and acted like there “was a shooter right outside the door,” he said.

“Nothing came out of anyone’s mouth” for over four hours, he said.“I wasn’t ready to accept that this is really going on next door, like right next to me. It’s on my campus,” Kunkel said.

“This is supposed to be a place where I’m coming, learning and bettering myself. And instead, students are getting hurt.”

The two buildings of Michigan State University (MSU) where the shooting took place yesterday night were accessible to the general public, said the police in their press briefing.

According to the police briefing at least two victims were killed at Berkey Hall and one at the MSU Union building not far away on campus.

MSU Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch said responding to the shooting was a “monumental task” because of the size of the campus.

“That’s part of the monumental task. We do have areas that are accessible to the public,” he was quoted as saying by CNN.

“The task in itself is that we have 400 buildings on campus and over 5,300 acres and part of the process in the response that we had is that we were able to divide and organise, to be methodical in the search process and obtain evidence and share as it comes through. But with a university our size and the areas that we are responsible for, that becomes a task.”

Interim Michigan State University president Teresa Woodruff said the school would move to emergency operations for next 48 hours, adding that this is time 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,” Ms Woodruff 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 9am on Tuesday at East Lansing Hannah Community Center at 819 Abbot Road, reported Lansing State Journal.

Ted Zimbo said he was walking to his residence hall when he encountered a woman with a “ton of blood on her.”

“She told me, ‘Someone came in our classroom and started shooting,”’ Zimbo told the Associated Press. “Her hands were completely covered in blood. It was on her pants and her shoes. She said, ‘It’s my friend’s blood.”’

Zimbo said the woman left to find a friend’s car while he returned to his SUV in a parking deck and threw a blanket over himself to hide for three hours.

The shooting at Michigan State is the latest in what has become a deadly new year in the US.

Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, most notably in California where 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans.

In 2022, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the US in which at least four people were killed or injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

“This is a uniquely American problem,” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer lamented.