Shooting on The University of Texas campus

Shooter appears to be dead.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/blotter/entries/2010/09/28/police_on_scene_of_shooting_on.html?cxntcid=breaking_news

How weird. At least he didn’t take out a bunch of students before he shot himself.

The campus is still on lockdown, though; there seems to be concern there is another shooter.

So far that seems to be true. Allegedly there is another suspect… may be unarmed or just a conflicting description.

Initial reports were of an “armed gunman”, presumably as opposed to an “unarmed gunman”.

Well, could had been an armed bowman, or an armed swordman, etc, etc… :dubious:

Or simply a bowman, or a swordsman, or a gunman.

Is an unarmed bowman any more dangerous than an unarmed swordsman?

More Guns, Less Crime author had been scheduled to speak on campus this evening.

I just heard that in addition to a ski mask, the shooter was supposedly wearing a suit. The business school is right across the street from the library – was it a disgruntled MBA candidate, perhaps?

The shooting was in the building (a library) just north of my office. I still have colleagues in the building in lockdown; they can’t leave until the president gives the ok. I have a 2 pm appointment on campus which might not happen, given the campus closure… but they are trying to open part of the campus in the next hour.

Very scary but interesting. The shooter wore a suit and may even have been spotted north of campus walking alongside the highway. The libraries, in particular, have been very hard hit by layoffs - lots of staff have been released. There was a pretty big announcement from the head of the library a few weeks ago about cutting subscriptions, etc.

Something makes me think that it was an attention-getting suicide; the shooter had to literally make an effort not to shoot anyone. Even though it was around 8:15 am this morning, there are tons of students around in front of the library and business school.

It’s early, and only a hunch, but I think the shooter may have been a laid off employee.

You must be in the Education building.

Bingo! (Well, I’m not there now.) One of my colleagues has updated his Facebook status with pictures of the SWAT team in the hallway.

The guy hasn’t even given his speech, and already there’s one fewer gun criminal on campus. Maybe he’s onto something!

A creepy update… they are still searching for a second suspect in adjacent buildings, as of 11:20 am CST. Campus remains closed.

seems to now be only a single person, a student, firing shoots in more than one location.

They’re not sure there was ever more than one guy.

I was in Parlin, which is a few blocks away from the library where the fellow shot himself. There were some conflicting descriptions which got the police looking for a second guy… in Calhoun, which is attached to my building.

It was interesting. I got called in to the English department’s offices and spent two hours with a few administrators, a mailman, and a former administrator and her five week old baby (who spent most of the time sleeping and nursing, thankfully). The SWAT teams were going up and down the hall with bomb-sniffing dogs. There was a pretty impressive commotion above us, but I don’t think they actually found anything.

The best part was my 8 am class. Sirens go off… we look at our professor, who is throughly unperturbed. Sirens go off again. Again. One of my classmates takes advantage of a pause to advise us that apparently there’s a shooter at the PCL. “And how did you discover this?” the professor asks.

“Well, they have an emergency alert system that texts us when something like this happens.”

“And you were checking your cell phone during class?”

“Well…”

“It’s good that you did, though. Now we know. Well, back to Cockney rhyming slang.”

One gets the idea that Dr. Hancock has been in far worse situations. I’m fairly confident that if the shooter had come in, waving his gun and shouting “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” our professor would have hurled his chair at him and continued “Now you can tell by the way he said ‘going’ that he’s from East Texas…”

Colton Tooley. Sophomore. Math major. Shooter at University of Texas was a student - CNN.com

They only do this stuff because they know it will make them famous after they die. All the news coverage perpetuates the problem.

I generally agree, but this was a different type of gunman. He walked, then ran, about 300 feet on a fairly densely populated street with an AK-47, fired some rounds in the air, and ran into the library, went up six flights, and shot himself. I think this was in a roughly 20 minute period. Several eyewitnesses made eye contact with him, thought for sure he would shoot them, but he didn’t.

He could have easily shot a number of people but chose not to. That’s interesting and significant. If he was aiming to kill someone in particular, surely he would have chosen a less conspicious costume until he got close…

Or maybe he was all set to massacre and couldn’t bring himself to actually shoot flesh and blood people, to take anyone else with him.

I can try to believe in the innate goodness of humans. Didn’t save him from himself, meanwhile. :frowning: