Police Say Gunman Is Dead After Shooting at Michigan State University (2023)

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Here’s the latest on the shooting at Michigan State University.

“I was shaking the entire time,” said Sophia Nedoff, 19, a dietetics major who learned of the attack after emerging from her chemistry exam. She hid for hours like thousands of other students. “I’m still a little shaken up from it.”

Here’s the latest:

• The five wounded people were in critical condition as of early Tuesday morning and were being treated at Sparrow Hospital, said Chris Rozman, the university Police Department’s interim deputy police chief. None of their names were released.

• The suspect had no connection to the university, Chief Rozman said, and it was not clear yet what connection the victims had. “We have no idea why he came to campus tonight,” he said.

• Shots were fired on Monday night inside Berkey Hall, home to the school’s college of arts and sciences, and later at the M.S.U. student union, according to the university Police Department.

• All campus activities have been canceled for 48 hours, including classes and athletics.

Reporting was contributed by April Rubin, John Yoon and Jin Yu Young.

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The mass shooting places Michigan State back in an uncomfortable national spotlight.

In 2016, The Indianapolis Star reported that Lawrence G. Nassar, a university physician renowned for working with Olympic gymnasts, was accused of assaulting girls and young women under the guise of medical treatment. Hundreds of women have since come forward to accuse him, including former student athletes at the university, where he worked for two decades and served as the team physician for two female varsity gymnastics squads.

In 2018, Michigan State agreed to pay 332 women who had sued the university a settlement of $500 million. That year, in separate criminal cases, he was sentenced to 40 to 125 years in prison for sex crimes. (In 2017, he was sentenced to 60 years on federal child pornography charges.)

The university had received reports of sexual abuse by Dr. Nassar as early as the 1990s, and a former president and coach were embroiled in court cases over how much they had known. On the day of his criminal sentencing in 2018, the university’s president, Lou Anna K. Simon, resigned under pressure over her handling of the scandal. Months later, she was charged with lying to police about her knowledge of a Title IX complaint filed against Dr. Nassar in 2014. The charges were dismissed in 2020.

Even with the financial settlement, the public scrutiny and the reshuffle in leadership, the university was unable to shake the legacy of the scandal. The university continued to make changes at the top as missteps by officials continued.

John Engler, the interim university president who replaced Dr. Simon, resigned in 2019 after an uproar over an interview he gave in which he said that some of Dr. Nassar’s victims appeared to be enjoying “the spotlight.”

The following year, Kathie Klages, a former university gymnastics coach, was sentenced to 90 days in prison for lying to the authorities about whether she knew that Dr. Nassar had committed sexual abuse for decades. Her conviction was overturned in 2021 when an appeals court ruled that her statements to university police detectives were not crucial to their investigation.

In October, Samuel Stanley Jr. became the third university president to resign in four years after clashing with board members over a Title IX case that involved a business school dean who had been forced into early retirement.

On Tuesday morning, after the shooting, the university’s interim president,Teresa Woodruff, said that the school would be closed for two days.

“This is a day of shock and heartbreak, here across our campus and our region,” she said. “It’s something that is quite unimaginable but has been imagined at other places and at other times. But we just cannot imagine that it is here.”

Fear gripped Michigan State University as a gunman roamed campus.

“I thought I was going to die,” Ms. Nodland, 22, a senior nursing major, said. “It sounded like he was right there.”

Ms. Nodland was one of many students and East Lansing residents who waited anxiously in dorms, restaurants and other places in the hours before the university police said early Tuesday that the 43-year-old gunman had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. For much of the night, they had few details about where he was or what he was doing.

“Run, Hide, Fight,” an 8:31 p.m. email told students and faculty about shots being fired “on or near” the East Lansing, Mich., campus. “Run means evacuate away from danger if you can do so safely, Hide means to secure-in-place, and Fight means protect yourself if no other option.”

Elena Tucker, 21, was in her apartment, a few hundred feet from campus, when that message came in. She also got a call from her mother in Ann Arbor, Mich. and texts from several friends. Yes, she was safe, she told them.

Still, as hundreds of police officers searched for the gunman and rumors flew about his location, she and her friends didn’t feel entirely secure sitting in her living room and watching the news and listening to police scanners.

“Everyone was texting their parents constantly,” said Ms. Tucker, who takes classes in Berkey Hall, one of the buildings where the gunman opened fire.

Others were trapped on campus.

Julian Alonso, a Michigan State University freshman, said that he had left his dormitory on Monday evening to buy a snack at a 7-Eleven, and returned a few minutes later to find at least 10 police cars a block away.

“I covered the door with my roommate’s bed and I turned off the lights,” he said at the time. “I’m keeping myself hidden in the closet.”

Marcus Wolff, 20, said on Tuesday that his usual Monday night volleyball game in a campus gym had been cut short by reports of a gunman on the loose. Minutes later, the gym was put under a lockdown and the lights were turned off.

“That was probably the scariest moment of it all,” said Mr. Wolff, an electrical engineering major, who sprinted away from the building when someone pulled the fire alarm. “Just the suspense and the anticipation being all huddled up in one little room like that.”

Michael Bolanos, 19, an acting major, was in a rehearsal at a campus auditorium when he and other cast members heard about the shooting.

For the three hours that they were locked down, the actors held beer bottles — props for their show, which is set in a bar — in case they would need to defend themselves. Mr. Bolanos said the bottles were meant to “provide some twisted sense of security in that moment.”

The silence during the manhunt extended to nearby streets, where several businesses heeded shelter-in-place orders as a police helicopter hovered overhead.

At the Peanut Barrel, a bar and grill across the street from Berkey Hall, the staff locked the doors, lowered the blinds and turned the lights down after word of the attack filtered in, said Diane Barnum, the manager on duty.

A few blocks away, the staff at El Azteco Mexican restaurant also locked the doors to protect themselves and their 15 customers, said Antonio Urista, the assistant general manager. As details about the shooting trickled in, he said, the mood turned anxious and students at the restaurant began trying to reach friends who were still on campus.

April Rubin and Sam Easter contributed reporting.

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Michigan’s governor called for stricter gun laws in a January address.

On Monday night in response to the fatal shooting at Michigan State University, she wrote on Twitter that mass shootings were “a uniquely American problem.”

Under the state’s open-carry laws, it is legal for people 18 and older to possess a licensed firearm in public as long as it is not concealed. Carriers must have a specific license to carry concealed firearms. People who have been convicted of certain felonies are prohibited from carrying firearms.

Firearms are prohibited on certain premises, including most religious institutions and on school grounds, with exceptions for parents or legal guardians in vehicles as they are dropping off or picking up a child. The same laws cover community colleges and university campuses and their dormitories.

In recent years, state representatives have proposed legislation that would require firearms to be secured away from minors and prohibit the sale or possession of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

In another high-profile mass shooting in the state, four students were killed in 2021 at Oxford High School, which is north of Detroit. A 15-year-old student, Ethan Crumbley, pleaded guilty, and the case prompted scrutiny of the school’s responsibility in the shooting.

The two sat in the basement of Case Hall for several hours with cafeteria workers. Once police said it was OK to leave, the two huddled at a bus station. They decided to go home Tuesday to be with their families. “We were taught that stuff in high school like what you’re supposed to do and where you’re supposed to go,” Taylor said, as she cried. “Even then no one knew what to do.”

Michigan State was one of the first land grant universities.

Under the 1862 Morrill Act, the state of Michigan received 240,000 acres of federal land that Native American tribes had ceded in 1819, which was then sold to start the university, one of the first land grant universities. Kansas State University and Pennsylvania State University also received land grants that year.

The Morrill Act was intended “to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes.” Michigan State’s legacy as a land grant university remains a core part of its identity and is often invoked by its leaders when describing its inclusive educational mission.

In 2020, a group of faculty drafted a “land acknowledgment” statement saying that the campus had been the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe people, including the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples.

Michigan State is a public research university and the largest university in the state. It offers more than 400 programs of study across 17 colleges to its 50,000 students. Its programs in education, communication and environmental science and engineering are globally recognized. By area, it occupies more than 5,000 acres.

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The first shooting occurred at Berkey Hall, the second at the M.S.U. student union, the police said. Victims were found at both locations.

“It was pretty tense,” he said. “Just praying, praying for family and the students that were injured and passed away. My kitchen manager, she was trying to calm us down … but at the same time you could tell she was really freaking out.

“We’re not looking out the window so I don’t know what’s going on across the street,” she said, adding that about a dozen customers were still at their tables.

The shooting at Michigan State University adds to the death toll on campuses in recent decades.

November 2022: Charlottesville, Va.

Three University of Virginia students, who all played on the football team, were killed when a gunman opened fire in a garage.

October 2015: Roseburg, Ore.

A 26-year-old man opened fire on the campus of Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon, leaving 10 people dead.

April 2012: Oakland, Calif.

A former student opened fire on students and staff at Oikos University, killing seven.

April 2007: Blacksburg, Va.

The killing of 33 people at Virginia Tech was among the worst campus shooting sprees in American history. Two more people died in a shooting on the same campus nearly five years later.

May 1970: Kent, Ohio

Four students were fatally shot on the Kent State University campus by members of the Ohio National Guard, who were breaking up a protest against President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

August 1966: Austin, Texas

A former Marine killed 16 people, including his wife and mother, from a tower at the University of Texas at Austin.