CHAPEL HILL (US), Aug 29: A University of North Carolina faculty member was shot and killed in a
campus building, an official said on Monday.
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said the shooting was in Caudill Laboratories, and there
is no longer a threat to the public. A suspect has been arrested, the school said.
Students and faculty at the flagship campus barricaded themselves in dorm rooms, offices and
classrooms for hours until a lockdown was lifted.
About three hours after warning students to seek shelter indoors and avoid windows, the school
posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, All clear. All clear. Resume normal activities.
The school’s first alert was sent out just after 1 pm. At 1.50 pm, officials posted on X that the shelter-
in-place order remained in effect and that it was an ongoing situation. About 40 minutes later, the
school added a post saying: "Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation. Suspect at
large” About two hours after the first alert went out; officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50
police vehicles at the scene and multiple helicopters circling over the school.
One officer admonished two people who tried to exit the student centre, yelling "Inside, now!"
About 10 minutes later, law enforcement escorted a group of students out of one of the science
buildings, with everyone walking in an orderly line with their hands up.
Shortly before 4 pm, students and faculty started emerging from campus buildings, with the
lockdown over.
The report of the shooting and subsequent lockdown paralyzed campus and parts of the surrounding
town of Chapel Hill a week after classes began at the state’s flagship public university. The university,
with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, cancelled Tuesday
classes.
During the lockdown, a student told TV station WTVD that she had barricaded her dormitory door
with her furniture. Another student, speaking softly, described hiding in fear with others in a dark
bathroom.
Adrian Lanier, a sophomore computer science major, told The Associated Press that he and others
sat against a wall, trying to stay as far away as possible from doors and windows. They waited for
hours as rumours spread.
"No one really felt safe enough to leave. I didn’t,” Lanier said.
Oliver Katz, an exchange student from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, said some students
crowded into gym locker rooms to get away from windows while others crouched in corners and sat
on the floor, he said. Police evacuated them hours later.
”This never happens where I’m from Katz said. ”It was intense. But I was a little surprised that
other people weren’t panicking that much” Katz, who has only been on campus for two weeks, said he’s worried his home university will bring
the exchange students home early. ”I don’t want to leave. I like it here, and I do still feel safe,” Noel T. Brewer, a professor of health behaviour, told the AP by phone during the lockdown that he
was once held at gunpoint in his mother’s jewelery store, but that Monday’s events were ”far more
stressful,”
Speaking from his locked office where he hid with other colleagues, Brewer, a 57-year-old married
father of two, said he was getting little information.
He also said he felt for anyone who might have been shot. But even in our own building, the students who are locked down and what they’re thinking about
— it’s just a lot. It’s a terrible situation,” said Brewer.
The nearby Chapel Hill-Carrboro City school district also locked down its schools for several hours as
a precaution. (AP)
