Michigan State University shooter's motive a mystery

A 43-year-old gunman killed three students and wounded five others at Michigan State University before an hours-long manhunt ended with the suspect’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot, authorities said on Tuesday.

Investigators had “no idea why” the suspect went on a shooting rampage on the campus in East Lansing, Michigan, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit, Jim Tarasca, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit office, said at a briefing. He confirmed the gunman had no known affiliation to the university.

The gunman was identified as Anthony Dwayne McRae, 43, said Chris Rozman, deputy chief of the Michigan State University police force, at the morning briefing.

Details about the sequence of events remained sketchy, but Rozman said shots were fired in two locations – an academic building called Berkey Hall and the Michigan State University (MSU) Union building.

Police swarming the campus in response to the shooting, which began shortly after 8 p.m. (0100 GMT), found victims at both locations, Rozman told reporters.

Three victims were killed and five were taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Lansing, the state capital, all of them listed in critical condition, he said. Two of the dead were at Berkey Hall and the other at the MSU Union.

Officials declined to provide any details about the victims, some of whose identities and relationship to the university were still being determined, Rozman said.

The gunman was confirmed dead, from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot roughly four hours after the bloodshed had started, Rozman said.

Rozman also said the suspect “was contacted by law enforcement off campus” at one point, adding, “that scene is being investigated as a crime scene.”

It remained unclear whether the gunman was found dead after he was confronted by police, or whether he may have taken his own life during such a encounter.

About an hour earlier, MSU police had released two still images of the suspect from surveillance video that showed him walking into a building, then mounting a short flight of stairs, wearing a jacket, a baseball cap and a black mask over his lower face. He was holding what appeared to be a pistol in one hand.

Students, faculty and residents in the surrounding off-campus neighborhoods of East Lansing had been told by authorities to “shelter in place” during the manhunt. That advisory was lifted once the suspect’s death was confirmed.

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 U.S. school campuses.

MSU officials said Monday night that all classes and school activities would be canceled for 48 hours at the university’s flagship East Lansing campus, a public academic center with some 50,000 students, mostly undergraduates.

“We will take two days … to give ourselves time to think and to grieve and to be together,” MSU president Teresa Woodruff said early Tuesday.