- Three students were killed, and five others wounded, some with life-threatening injuries, in a shooting on Michigan State University’s campus Monday night.
- The gunman fled the shooting scenes — an academic building and the student union — prompting a manhunt. He later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- Police identified the suspect as Anthony Dwayne McRae, a 43-year-old man who was not affiliated with MSU. Police do not yet know a motive.
- "This truly has been a nightmare we are living tonight," said Chris Rozman of the MSU Police.
Another American city was dealing with the aftermath of yet another horrific mass shooting on the campus of Michigan State University on Tuesday.
Police searched for a motive, survivors recounted their brush with death, politicians condemned the mayhem and expressed condolences, and a heartbroken doctor sobbed as he counted the latest casualties — three dead, five injured, all students targeted by yet another suspect wielding a gun and an unknown grudge.
The post-chaos choreography following the latest mass shooting was all too familiar to Michigan mom Andrea Ferguson, whose daughter survived the 2021 massacre at Oxford High School and now attends Michigan State.
“It was like reliving Oxford all over again,” Ferguson said, referring to the high school massacre that left four students dead. “The phone call, the word shooting, shooter, it was surreal.”
This was also the second deadly mass shooting for 21-year-old Michigan State University senior Jackie Matthews. She was 11 years when a gunman armed with an assault rifle gunned down 20 first graders and six staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in her hometown of Newtown, Connecticut.
“Something so traumatic is devastating no matter what age you are,” said Matthews, who remembers being on lockdown at Reed Intermediate School, the neighboring school to Sandy Hook.
Meanwhile, an iconic fixture on the MSU campus known as The Rock was painted black Tuesday in response to the mass shooting. And written in red on the rock’s face were the words “How many more?” followed by “Stay Safe MSU.”
“This truly has been a nightmare that we are living tonight,” said Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of the Michigan State University Police.
All three victims were from the Detroit suburbs, university police said. Alexandria Verner was a junior from Clawson, Brian Fraser was a sophomore from Grosse Pointe, and junior Arielle Anderson was also from Grosse Pointe.
Monday’s massacre was the second school shooting of the year, according to NBC News’ school shooting tracker. And it happened on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Parkland school shooting in Florida that left 14 students and three staff members dead.
