A gunman fatally shot three students and wounded five at Michigan State University before a manhunt ended when the suspect killed himself in the latest mass shooting on a U.S. campus. Investigators had "no idea why" the suspect on Monday evening went on a rampage on the campus of the East Lansing school. FBI agent Jim Tarasca confirmed that the gunman had no known affiliation to the university, which is 90 miles northwest of Detroit. The five wounded remain in critical condition, Reuters reports. The motive of gunman Anthony McRae, 43, remained a mystery. McRae's father said his son lied about having a firearm inside their house and firing the gun in his backyard, the Washington Post reports. The younger McRae was on probation for 18 months until May 2021 for possessing a loaded gun in a vehicle, according to the state Corrections Department. Chris Rozman of the university police said shots were fired in two locations, the academic Berkey Hall and the Michigan State University (MSU) Union building.
Rozman said the university was not aware of any threats made to the campus. "We have no idea why he came to campus to do this tonight," Rozman said. 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. Local television news footage 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. Classes and school activities were canceled for 48 hours at the university's flagship East Lansing campus, with some 50,000 students, mostly undergraduates. Alexis Dinkins, an MSU sophomore who was inside a a dormitory, heard people barricading doors and shouting, “Go, go, go" as the incident unfolded.
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