Terrified students and professors cowered in classrooms and dorms as a gunman roamed the floors of a University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) building, killing three people and critically wounding a fourth before dying in a shoot-out with police.
The gunman in Wednesday’s shooting was a professor who had unsuccessfully sought a job at the school, a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation said.
He previously worked at East Carolina University in North Carolina, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information publicly.
Photo: AFP
The attack was the worst shooting in the city since October 2017, when a gunman killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 after opening fire from the window of a room at Mandalay Bay casino on the world-famous Las Vegas Strip only a couple kilometers from the UNLV campus.
Lessons learned from that shooting — the deadliest in modern US history — helped authorities to work “seamlessly” in reacting to the UNLV attack, Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference.
At about 11:45am, the gunman opened fire on the fourth floor of the building that houses UNLV’s Lee Business School, then went to several other floors before he was killed in a shoot-out with two university police detectives outside the building, UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia said.
Authorities gave the all-clear about 40 minutes after the first report of an active shooter.
Three people were killed and a fourth was hospitalized in critical but stable condition, police said.
It was not immediately clear how many of the school’s 30,000 students were on campus at the time, but McMahill said students had been gathered outside the building to eat and play games.
If police had not killed the attacker, “it could have been countless additional lives taken,” he said.
“No student should have to fear pursuing their dreams on a college campus,” the sheriff said.
Police did not immediately identify the victims, the attacker or the motive and did not say what kind of weapon was used, although some witnesses reported hearing about 20 shots fired.
UNLV academic Kevaney Martin took cover under a desk in her classroom, where another faculty member and three students took shelter with her.
“It was terrifying. I can’t even begin to explain,” Martin said. “I was trying to hold it together for my students, and trying not to cry, but the emotions are something I never want to experience again.”
Martin said she was texting friends and loved ones, hoping to receive word a suspect had been detained. When another professor came to the room and told everyone to evacuate, they joined dozens of others rushing out of the building. Martin had her students pile into her car and drove them off campus.
“Once we got away from UNLV, we parked and sat in silence,” she said. “Nobody said a word. We were in utter shock.”
Selena Guevara said she got a phone call from her daughter, Markie Montoya, who was in class in the building and heard “gunshots, screaming and yelling” but was not hurt.
“She’s hysterical, telling me ‘I love you’ and so scared,” Guevara said.
Another student, Jordan Eckermann, 25, said he was in his business law class in a second-floor classroom when he heard a loud bang and a piercing alarm went off, sending students to their feet. Some ran from the room in panic while others heeded their professor’s instructions to stay calm, Eckermann said.
He walked out and locked eyes with a law enforcement officer in a bulletproof vest holding a long gun. Clothing, backpacks and water bottles lay scattered on the floor.
Eckerman said he mouthed to the officer: “Where do I go?”
The officer pointed to an exit.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS