The Multi-State Multiple Shooting at the Florida High School in East Lansing, Mich., on Monday, Oct. 17, 2023

Monday’s shooting is the latest mass shooting in the U.S. that has claimed dozens of lives so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization. The group defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter. Nearly 650 mass shootings took place in the country in 2022, according to the group.

The gunman was a 43-year-old man who was not affiliated with the university, Interim Deputy Chief Chris Rozman said, adding, “We have no idea why he came to campus to do this tonight.” Police have not said how the victims were or if they were students.

The massacre at the high school in Florida took place five years ago today. It also marked the 67th mass shooting – with four or more shot, not including a gunman – so far in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Andrew McCabe said the FBI and their colleagues were trying to understand what brought this person to this moment in the community. “This community is struggling to understand why they are the latest in what is a uniquely American experience, and understanding and experiencing a mass shooting in their midst.”

Local authorities said the suspect, a 43-year-old man, was found dead off the campus in East Lansing, Mich., from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. They said the man is not associated with the university and a motive has not been determined. Police also said they believe there is only one suspect.

Chris Trush told CNN he saw people running out of the Union building after the emergency alert went out to students.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is on a campus this size how quickly every student staff faculty member immediately took action. Teresa Woodruff said during the news conference that they sheltered in place for hours.

As shelter-in-place orders were in effect Monday evening, another student, Gabe Treutel, said he and his dorm mates hunkered down and turned to a local police scanner for information.

Another MSU student, Nithya Charles, told CNN she was sheltering within a lounge area at Campbell Hall on the north side of campus with about 30 other people.

“We’re not learning very much,” Charles told CNN’s Erin Burnett earlier in the night, saying she did not hear any gunshots herself, but that some of her co-workers heard shots.

The Night of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting at MSU: How East Lansing Public Schools will be closed in the next two days

Students will see a police presence during the next two days even though the threat to the campus has been eliminated.

For at least 48 hours, all on-campus activities have been canceled. The school is providing counseling resources for students and employees.

We want to wrap our warm arms around every family that is touched by this tragedy and give them peace that comes from understanding in moments like this, that is why we will change over time. We can’t allow this to happen again.

The attack at MSU – which came one day before the five-year anniversary of a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – resulted in the closure of all East Lansing Public Schools Tuesday.

“Tonight has been horrific. It’s been horrific for all of the students here and around the region. Schools have been closed. This has affected our whole region, our whole community. It’s affected families, everyone across our community,” Lansing Mayor Andy Schor said.

The nightmare has been a real one for Rozman. “We are relieved to no longer have an active threat on campus, while we realize that there is so much healing that will need to take place after this,” he added.

The response to the shooting at Michigan State was a “monumental task”, according to the Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police.

The process of looking for evidence and sharing it was made easier because we have a lot of buildings on campus and 5,300 acres. With a university we have areas that we are responsible for and that becomes a challenge.

New Michigan State University Students, Parents, and Campus Security in the Aftermath of the Parkland Mass Shooting, as Senator Elissa Slotkin, an Undergraduate Candidate

Police said at an early morning news conference that the public can go to the buildings during business hours.

Hundreds of officers from different agencies responded to the scene, Rosman said. Sparrow hospital is where the victims were taken. The victims were listed in critical condition, but no information about them was available.

Berkey and other buildings were secured by police and the shelter in place warning had been lifted early Tuesday morning. Earlier in the evening, police discouraged parents from coming to campus.

“For parents, we’re aware,” Rozman said. “I can only imagine the emotion that’s involved right now. It’s going to help us, and it’s going to help our response, and it’s going to help us identify the shooter the less people that are on campus at this point.”

America’s latest mass shooting, until the inevitable next one, wrote a new community in the roll call of colleges stigmatized by tragedy. Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, and the University of Virginia should be joined by Michigan State University.

Even after more pointless deaths, the politics of gun control and splits among Americans will remain the same, and nothing will be done.

School shootings are becoming more frequent and exposing more students to the horror, as well as millions of people thinking that it could happen to them.

The survivors and family members of Michigan State met with Rep. Elissa Slotkin on Tuesday and she said they were terrified. “It’s terrorizing and we either do something about something that is terrorizing our population, or we don’t care about it.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told CNN that when she dropped her kids off at Michigan State a year-and-a-half ago she thought, “It is going to be a miracle if we get these kids through four years of college without some sort of an incident like this taking place, because they happen so frequently.”

Monday’s killings led to a heartbreaking only-in-America moment when a young survivor of the Parkland shooting counseled the Michigan State Spartans on how to process their nightmare and what the future would bring.

The governor told students who had been through another mass shooting at a Michigan high school that their campuses, churches, classrooms and communities should not be battlefields.

Each child is familiar with active shooter drills. Every parent knows the lurking anxiety that the worse could happen one day when they drop their child off at class. One of the only mercies of Covid-19 school shutdowns was that fear went away for a while.

A previous generation of students were affected by the massacre in Virginia Tech and the shooting in Colorado that killed 12 students and a teacher.

The three students killed, two of whom are from the same Michigan hometown, included an aspiring doctor, a beloved fraternity president and a biology student from a close-knit town.

“How is it possible that this happened in the first place, an act of senseless violence that has no place in our society and in particular no place in school,” asked Jon Dean, superintendent of Grosse Pointe Public Schools. “It touched our community not once, but twice.”

Such is the inertia surrounding gun politics in Washington, that it’s become a cliche in itself to write that the usual rituals of regret and condolences played out in the capital after a mass shooting but without any expectation that politicians would respond with meaningful measures to stop it happening again.

President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of senators did pass the most significant gun safety law in decades last year, though it failed to ban any weapons and fell well short of what the White House, gun control advocates and most Americans want to see. Future gun control legislation is unthinkable with Republicans now holding a narrow House majority.

Gun politics remain difficult for lawmakers in swing states, despite the hope of firearms reform activists that the Democratic sweep of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature in Michigan will open the possibility of significant changes to the law.

A family’s worst nightmare that is happeningfar too often in this country is what Biden said, speaking at a conference of county executives in Washington.

“We have to do something to stop gun violence ripping apart our communities,” he said, and renewed his call for an assault weapon ban that everyone knows had no chance of passing even in a Democratic-run Congress.

Arguments against gun control are as well rehearsed as those for it. Second amendment supporters say that the answer is for more guns on the streets to allow people to defend themselves, and to harden institutions such as schools and universities. Many point out that often, shootings are perpetrated by gunmen with troubled mental histories or who become isolated or alienated from their society.

There is not a lot of effort from the Republicans in Washington to spend huge amounts of money to fix mental health services. In the states, Republican governors and legislatures are busily loosening already lax guns laws in a way that are likely to lead to even easier access to weapons.

Multiple Killings in a Black Hole: A Case Study of a Criminal Associated with a Killing Candidate Michael McRae

Michael said that his son began to change after his wife’s death. He was getting bitter. It was both angry and bitter. So angry. That is evil. He began to allow himself to go. His teeth were falling out. He stopped cutting his hair. He looked like a man in a wolf suit.

Red flag laws, that allow weapons taken from people who are mentally ill to work, may become more likely because of the stalemate over guns rights and gun control. Katherine Schweit, a former FBI senior official and active shooter expert, said people who see relatives deteriorating mentally need to act.

She told CNN’s Jake Tapper that they had to report things. It was the act of seeing something and saying something that prevented the terrorist events in the United States. We need to do the same things in this type of situation.

McRae was previously charged with carrying a concealed weapon – a felony count that would have prevented him from being able to buy a gun if he were convicted.

Police discovered a note on McRae that listed other possible attack targets. Police there said that there is no threat to the schools, and that the two schools were on the list.

The note that says McRae is the leader of a group of 20 killers has targets in addition to the warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store, and a fast food restaurant, law enforcement officials who have access to the note told CNN.

What happened in the area of the left shot by a student at MSU High School? A grieving attorney general says the family has lived through the past

Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel – who said she has sons at MSU who were left shaken – told CNN many unanswered questions remain about the gunman’s history.

There is an individual who was off the street for a gun offense and in the exact same area. He had his parole extended a couple of times and I’d like to know why.

The mass shooting also left five other students in critical condition. While authorities have not identified them, student Guadalupe Huapilla-Pérez is among the wounded, according to a verified GoFundMe account and the National HEP/CAMP Association, which Huapilla-Pérez participated in at school.

After the first shots were fired, a tip led officers to the suspect more than three hours later. Police said the tipster pointed them to the gunman’s location 17 minutes after they released surveillance photos of him.

A search warrant was executed on a residence connected to the suspect, but authorities are not yet confirming if it was the shooter’s residence or what they found there.

“We now have a complete generation that has grown up with this, many times over, from elementary school all the way up to now,” East Lansing Mayor Ron Bacon said. They live with this all the time.

After the tragic loss of Emma Anderson, the last of her family, the Oxford High School student body and the Fraternity of Clawson, Michigan

When gunfire broke out at Oxford High School in November 2021, Emma hid inside the band hall of Oxford High School where others had barricaded the door. The students went to the store out of an exterior door, according to her father.

Some students were able to escape through the windows as others stayed behind to help the injured, using their hands to clamp down on the wounds, he said. I have never seen so much blood.

Verner was a student leader in her hometown of Clawson, Michigan, where she excelled in volleyball, basketball and softball.

Fraser served as the president of the Michigan Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity said in a statement. The people that he interacted with on campus, as well as his brothers, the Greek community, and the Fraternity, were all great friends of his.

Anderson was studying to be a doctor, according to her aunt. She was supposed to be in class, but still her life was taken by a Coward who was about to destroy my entire family. “No parent should have to bury their children.”

“This is our home and we went through the unimaginable,” MSU undergraduate student body president Jo Kovach said. “We lost three beautiful souls who we attend classes with, are friends with, are in clubs with. Their absence from this campus and the world will always be felt.

“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told the crowd. “We shouldn’t have to subconsciously scan every room for an exit, go through the grim exercise of figuring out who our last call would be to.”

The Case Against McRae in High School Shootings: A Report on the Izzo Term in MSU Athletics and a Case against a Criminal Induced Shooting

At Wednesday’s vigil, MSU’s head men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo told the students to allow themselves to show their emotions as they process the tragedy.

Law enforcement officials who have access to the note told CNN it began with his name and went on to say he was going to shoot up the school.

All the businesses listed on the letter were warned they had been named, but that the gunman was dead and there is no credibility to his claims of being the leader of any team, law enforcement officials said.

A conviction for a simple crime does not prevent someone from buying a gun. The charge in Michigan is high-class (low-class) and low-class (low-class) under the law.

A law enforcement source said that in 2021, McRae bought two guns in Michigan. A source says that there was a Hi-Point 9mm pistol, as well as a Taurus pistol.

“He did purchase the gun legally. He was allowed to purchase the gun. There wasn’t anything we could have done to prevent him from purchasing a firearm.

It was easy for someone with a mental health issue to acquire a weapon even after they had been found to have been illegally possess a gun.

Spartans During the Great Shooting: Michael Kovach and the Spartan Family. After the Masses, Haller Comes Back

At Wednesday’s vigil, the speakers honored the three students lost in the shooting. They remembered their smiles, their kindness, their sense of humor and the dreams they had.

“The time away from work for her family, the long recovery road ahead, and the subsequent medical expenses to care for Guadalupe, will place both an emotional and financial a burden on her family,” the organization said on Facebook.

There will not be a return to normal. What that will feel like has changed after this event. But that does not mean that is bad, said Kovach. “If there’s one thing I know and love about Spartans is that in times of need we come together.”

Michigan State Police provided security at the vigil, to allow the police to grieve, the department said.

Athletic events, some of which were postponed or canceled due to the shooting, are scheduled to resume this weekend and classes will recommence Monday, university officials announced.

Alan Haller is the vice president and director of athletics at Michigan State, and he said that athletics can be a point of strength for a community. The chance to represent all of our community has never been greater.

Student athletes may opt out of participating, Haller said, explaining, “there are some who aren’t ready to return to athletic events. Those feelings are incredibly valid.”

Student injuries in a shooting spree: a university professor tells CNN that Berkey Hall is closed after a gunman killed two students

Teresa Woodruff said the five injured students are showing signs of improvement. One has been moved from critical to stable condition and the others remain in critical condition, Board of Trustees chair Rema Vassar said.

Berkey Hall, where two students were killed, will be closed for the rest of the semester. The nearby student union, where Brian Fraser was killed, is also closed, she said, noting its reopening is still being evaluated.

Even as the campus gets back to normal, community members like Professor Marco Dez-Muoz are still dealing with pain and shock from Monday night.

Díaz-Muñoz doesn’t want to return to Berkey Hall, where the gunman entered through the back door of his classroom and began firing at his Cuban literature students, injuring several and killing Anderson and Verner, he told CNN’s Miguel Marquez.

“It was like seeing something not human standing there,” he said, describing the masked gunman. Doz-Muoz prevented the shooter from coming back into the classroom after throwing himself against a door.

Two girls, who he later learned were Anderson and Verner, seemed to be in the worst condition and were “lying there in these pools of blood,” the professor said. Most or all of the injured students were in his classroom, according to him.

He said that he doesn’t want to have to teach that class because he doesn’t want to remember the scenes. There is a need to see my students face to face, because I need to see that they are alive.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/us/michigan-state-university-shooting-friday/index.html

Identifying McRae via a note on a Michigan State University shooting friday night shooting at a local supermarket, a police officer tells CNN

The gunman, Anthony Dwayne McRae, was found by police about 4 miles from campus later Monday night after a tipster recognized his photo in the news and alerted authorities, according to authorities.

On his body and in his backpack, investigators found two legally purchased but unregistered 9mm handguns, several loaded magazines and dozens of loose rounds of ammunition, authorities said.

But the lesser charge, negotiated down by a prosecutor, did not prohibit him from purchasing firearms in the future, Lansing Police Chief Ellery Sosebee said Thursday.

Law enforcement officials with access to the note told CNN that targets included a warehouse, a discount store, a church, and a fast food restaurant.

Gonzalez said that they found that he had contact with some of those places. He said that McRae worked at a warehouse for the supermarket chain.

Gonzalez said that he had issues with the employees of a couple of businesses, where he was asked to leave. It looked like the motive was that he was slighted, and that was what the note indicated.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/us/michigan-state-university-shooting-friday/index.html

An Angel in a Small Community, Alex Shellenbarger: A Memory of a Mom and a Father Who Lived on Earth

She was trying to finish her degree from Michigan State University before her term ended, according to the family. “As an Angel here on Earth, Arielle was sweet and loving with an infectious smile that was very contagious. We are devastated by the violence inflicted upon her and other innocent victims.

Billy Shellenbarger was a family friend and told CNN that her kindness was on display. He called her Alex when she was in kindergarten.

It is tough to lose a person on this planet, let alone a small community. It will take a while to recover, but to have known her for the duration of time that we all have, is a gift to all of us.