(Reuters) – At least one person was killed and several injured after gunfire erupted at Michigan State University on Monday night, as police swarmed the main campus in East Lansing searching for a lone suspect, according to authorities and local news media.
Few official details about the gun violence were immediately available, but university police said on Twitter that shots were fired in two locations – near an academic building called Berkey Hall and an athletic facility known as IM East.
The Detroit News reported one confirmed fatality on campus, inside Berkey Hall, citing Michigan State University (MSU) spokesperson Emily Guerrant, but Reuters could not independently verify that information.
“There are multiple reported injuries,” MSU said on its official police and public safety Twitter feed. It later said an unspecified number of victims were being transported to a nearby hospital.
Several campus building had been cleared and secured nearly two hours after the gunfire was first reported on campus, MSU police said.
Police and the city of East Lansing, a college town near the state capital of Lansing and about 90 miles northwest of Detroit, tweeted that a single suspect, initially described as a short male wearing a mask, was at large and believed to be on foot.
Students, faculty and residents in surrounding off-campus neighborhoods were urged by authorities to “shelter in place,” while police searched for the suspect.
MSU is a major public institution of higher education whose flagship East Lansing campus accounts for 50,000 graduate and undergraduate students. University police said Monday night that all classes and campus activities would be canceled for the next 48 hours.
Monday night’s violence came roughly 14 months after a deadly mass shooting on Nov. 30, 2021, at Oxford High School in Oakland County, Michigan, about 80 miles east of East Lansing, in which a 15-year-old student opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol.
Four classmates were killed and six other students and a teacher were wounded in that attack, the deadliest U.S. school shooting that year.
Authorities said the teenage suspect, who has pleaded not guilty to murder charges, used a gun his parents bought him as a Christmas present despite signs that he was emotionally disturbed. Both parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the case.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer said on Twitter that she was being briefed on the East Lansing shooting.