Michigan Gunman Charged With Threatening 2 New Jersey Schools: It’s Official

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The gunman who killed three students and wounded five at Michigan State University was a 43-year-old man with a prior gun violation who shot himself after a hunt for an hour that ended in a gridlock with police for miles. from campus, officials said Tuesday.

Detectives were still investigating why Anthony McRae opened fire in an academic and student union building just before 8.30pm on Monday. The shootings led to a harrowing lockdown of the campus and a manhunt for the gunman that ended about three hours later.

“We have absolutely no idea what the motive was,” said Chris Rozman, deputy chief of campus police, adding that McRae, of Lansing, was not a Michigan State student or employee.

The gunman was found with a note in his pocket indicating a threat against two schools in Ewing Township, New Jersey, where he had ties, the district’s superintendent said in a statement posted online.

Ewing Public Schools were closed for the day, but it was later determined there was no threat, Superintendent David Gentile said in the statement, based on information from the Ewing Police Department.

McRae had not lived in the Ewing area for several years, according to the affidavit.

“This is still fluid,” Rozman said. “Crime scenes are still being worked on and we’re still putting the pieces together to try and figure out what happened.”

Those killed and wounded in the shootings at Berkey Hall and the MSU Union, a popular place to eat and study, were all students, Rozman said. Five remained in critical condition at Sparrow Hospital, said Dr. Denny Martin, who fought back tears at a news conference.

“Our Spartan community is reeling today,” Michigan State alumna Gretchen Whitmer said at the briefing.

President Joe Biden pledged his support during a phone call, he said.

“We mourn the loss of beautiful souls and pray for those who continue to fight for their lives. … Another place that should be about community and union destroyed by bullets and bloodshed,” Whitmer said.

Michigan State has approximately 50,000 students, 19,000 of whom live on the suburban East Lansing campus. As hundreds of officers searched the campus, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit, students hid wherever they could Monday night.

During that time, police released a photo of the suspect and an “alert citizen” recognized him in the Lansing area, Rozman said.

“That’s exactly what we were trying to achieve by releasing that image. I had no idea where he was at the time,” said the deputy chief.

Police confronted McRae about 5 miles from campus in an industrial area, where he killed himself, Rozman said.

McRae was placed on probation for 18 months until May 2021 for carrying a loaded, concealed handgun without a permit, according to the state Department of Corrections.

In McRae’s Lansing neighborhood, there was a heavy police presence overnight. Suzanne Shook said she has lived a block from McRae for about a year.

“I never talked to him,” Shook said. “When he was walking or cycling, he was always direct and didn’t look at anyone.”

Meanwhile, the students remembered the terror of the previous night. Dominik Molotky said he was studying Cuban history around 8:15 p.m. when he and fellow students heard gunshots outside the classroom. He told ABC’s “Good Morning America” ​​that seconds later, the gunman walked in and fired three or four more shots as the students took cover.

“I dropped down and covered myself, and so did the rest of the students. He gave four more knocks and when he was silent for about 30 seconds to a minute, two of my colleagues started to open a window, and this went on for about 30 seconds. There was glass everywhere,” Molotky said.

“After that I broke the window and got out of there and then booked them back into my flat,” she said. He was not sure if any of the students had been shot.

Claire Papoulias described on NBC’s “Today” show how she and other students rushed to escape from a history class through a window after the gunman entered through the back door and started shooting.

“There was a boy in my class and he would wait by the window and catch people and help people fall,” she said. “As soon as I fell out of the window, I fell to the ground a little bit. I just grabbed my backpack and phone and I remember running for my life.

Ryan Kunkel, 22, was taking a class in the engineering building when he learned of the shooting from a university email. Kunkel and 13 other students turned off the lights and acted as if “there was a shooter right outside the door,” he said.

“It didn’t even come out of anybody’s mouth” for more than four hours, he said.

Ted Zimbo said he was walking to his dorm when he encountered a woman with “a ton of blood on her.”

“He told me, ‘Someone came into our classroom and started shooting,'” Zimbo told The Associated Press. “His hands were completely covered in blood. It was on pants and shoes. He said, “It is my friend’s blood.”

Zimbo said the woman went to look for a friend’s car while he returned to his SUV and threw a blanket over her to hide for three hours.

All classes, sports and other activities have been canceled for 48 hours.

The university’s interim president, Teresa Woodruff, said it would be a time for “reflection, grieving and coming together.”

“This Spartan community — this family — will come back together,” Woodruff said.

The shooting comes a day before the fifth anniversary of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that killed 17 people and is the latest in what has become a deadly New Year’s Eve in the United States.

Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, most notably in California, where 11 people were killed while celebrating the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans.

In 2022, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the United States in which at least four people were killed or injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

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Associated Press writers Ed White and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.