'No idea why' gunman at Michigan State University killed three students

By Dieu-Nalio Chery

EAST LANSING, Mich. (Reuters) -A 43-year-old gunman fatally shot three students and wounded five at Michigan State University before an hours-long manhunt ended when the suspect killed himself in the latest mass shooting on a U.S. campus, authorities said on Tuesday.

Investigators had "no idea why" the suspect on Monday evening went on a rampage on the campus of the East Lansing school, 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, which is about 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Detroit.

The five students wounded in the shooting all remain in critical condition, a hospital official said on Tuesday.

Officials declined to provide any details about the victims until family was notified.

"I am filled with rage that we have to have another press conference to talk about our children being killed in our schools," Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, who represents the area, said during the news conference. "If this is not a wake-up call to do something, then I don't know what is."

The shootings took place about 30 miles south of Oxford, Michigan, where a teenaged gunman in 2021 used a rifle his father bought as a Christmas present to kill four students at the local high school. The incidents are part of an epidemic of gun violence that has plagued American schools in recent years.

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

At about 8:30 p.m. local time, police received a call that shots were fired in Berkey Hall, an academic building on the school's northern campus.

Officers arrived within minutes and found several people shot, including two who were deceased. Police then began receiving calls about another shooting at a nearby building, where officers found the third fatality, Rozman said.

Police located the suspect in Lansing at 11:35 p.m., about three hours after the first report of a shooting. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Rozman said.

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.

Rozman credited a citizen who saw the photos with calling in a tip to police that led to authorities finding the gunman.

Authorities did not disclose the type of weapon the shooter used during the rampage, nor whether he was armed with more than one gun.

President Joe Biden spoke to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Monday night about the shooting, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a Twitter post.

Students, faculty and residents in the surrounding off-campus neighborhoods of East Lansing were 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.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago, Editing by Nick Zieminski and Lisa Shumaker)