The gunman has been identified as 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae.
At least three people are dead and five more are injured after a gunman invaded the Michigan State University campus yesterday and opened fire. We have the latest on the events that saw terrified students barricade themselves in classrooms for hours, and how authorities dealt with the “monumental” task of apprehending the shooter.
What happened
At 8:31 pm, MSU students and faculty received an email. It told them shots had been fired on or near campus. “Run, Hide, Fight,” it said. That meant get away from the danger if possible, conceal yourself if not, and if there’s no alternative, fight to protect yourself.
Police rushed to answer reports of a shooting at Berkey Hall, where lessons are held, followed by the student union. Hours later, the campus was told that the suspect had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“We are devastated at the loss of life,” Michigan State University Interim President Teresa Woodruff said.
As the violence unfolded, students and others sheltered in place for hours on the East Lansing campus, which is home to 50,000 people.
Claire Papoulias, a history student, described the scene when McRae entered her classroom.
“The shooter opened the back classroom door and started firing at my classmates in the back, wounding them. I smelled and saw the gunpowder,” she told CNN. “I thought I was going to die.”
Papoulias said that after the shooter exited the room, leaving the door open, students broke the first floor window so that their classmates could jump out — one boy bravely standing underneath it to catch those coming after him.
The victims
The three victims who were shot dead during Monday’s attack were identified on Tuesday.
Brian Fraser, 20, served as the president of the Michigan Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta. His family said that they’re not ready to speak about his loss, but his fraternity said that he was a great friend to his brothers and those he interacted with on campus.
Arielle Anderson, 19, was a junior who aspired to become a pediatric doctor. “She’s kind, loving, caring, compassionate, driven and very family oriented,” her grandmother April Davis told the Detroit Free Press. She was a living angel.”
“She just has so much passion … I just I’m still trying to grasp it,” Davis said.
Alexandria “Alex” Verner, also a junior, was kind, and always wanted to help. “It’s going to be my mission in life to make sure that families don’t go through what we went through,” Verner’s father told The Washington Post.
Nightmarish flashbacks
For some, the nightmare echoed earlier experiences. Andrea Ferguson, whose daughter survived a deadly mass shooting at Oxford High School in 2021, and now attends MSU, told NBC News how it felt to receive the news that another attack was taking place.
“It was like re-living Oxford all over again,” she said. “The phone call, the word shooting, shooter, it was so real.”
She added that she’d “never expected in my lifetime to have to experience two school shootings.”
Matthew Riddle’s daughter, Emma Grace Riddle, a freshman history major, survived the same attack. Speaking to NBC News, Riddle remembered talking to his daughter in the aftermath of that day.
“‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice, right?” he said. “This has happened to you and it can’t happen again, right? To Oxford, to you or anybody else,’ and frankly that’s not true.”
Riddle added that unlike many of her classmates, Emma’s experience gives her the unfortunate distinction of knowing how to manage the coming days.
Another MSU senior, Jackie Matthews, attended school near Sandy Hook during the catastrophic 2012 mass shooting. She was just 11 years old, going to the nearby Reed Intermediate School in Newtown, when that attack took place. As alarm spread across the MSU campus on Monday, she started checking up on friends immediately.
“Something so traumatic is devastating no matter what age you are,” she said in a viral TikTok video per NBC.
“No one thinks it’s going to happen to them until it does. This is becoming way too familiar for too many people,” she said. “I just hope we can change things so no one has to experience this — let alone once. I mean, twice is something no one should have to [experience].”
A behemoth task for law enforcement
Neither of the buildings where the violence took place requires special access to enter, and both are open to the public during business hours. MSU Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Marlon Lynch said that the size of the campus made apprehending the shooter particularly challenging.
“That’s part of the monumental task. We do have areas that are accessible to the public,” Lynch said. “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 organize 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.”
Berkey Hall is “a purely academic building,” Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of the Michigan State University Police said per NBC News.
“That building is unlocked and open to the public during business hours, if you will,” he explained. He added that the shooting took place before the building was secured for the night, and that “to my knowledge, there were activities occurring in that building as part of the academic function of the university.”
The gunman
The gunman who wrought deadly havoc on the MSU campus before dying of a self-inflicted wound has been identified as 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae. Police say he had no connection to the university.
When he was discovered, McRae “had a note in his pocket that indicated a threat to two Ewing Public Schools,” the police department in New Jersey said on Tuesday. The schools were closed out of an “abundance of caution,” but parents were assured that “the incident is isolated to Michigan, and there is no threat to Ewing Schools.”
A source familiar to the investigation told CNN that McRae, a New Jersey native, had claimed in the letter that there were “20 of him” who would carry out these shootings.
Though his motive is still unknown, police in Ewing said the “investigation revealed that McRae had a history of mental health issues.”
His father, Michael McRae, told CNN that Anthony became isolated and angry after his mother’s death from a stroke two years ago.
Time to be together
The university will take two full days off classes — both in-person and online — to regroup and come together following the tragedy.
“This is a day of shock and heartbreak,” Teresa K. Woodruff, interim president of Michigan State University told a press conference.
“We want to wrap our warm arms around every family that is touched by this tragedy and give them the peace that passeth understanding in moments like this… we will change over time,” Woodruff said. “We cannot allow this to continue to happen again.”
Police have asked students to keep off campus as they continue to inspect the crime scenes and move to emergency operations.
“Supervisors will be notifying designated essential employees if they should report to campus tomorrow,” the school said.
The long view
It’s hard to believe, but today marks five years since the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people and injured just as many.
We’re taking a look at the devastating ways gun violence impacts children— including a few we might not realize. And because one victim of gun violence is too many, we’re also examining how other countries have stopped mass shootings.
