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Professor killed in campus shooting at Mississippi university Professor killed in campus shooting at Mississippi university
(about 4 hours later)
A professor was killed in his office at Delta State University in Mississippi, an official said on Monday, and the campus remained on lockdown with the shooter still believed to be on the loose. A professor was killed in his office at Delta State University in Mississippi, and investigators are searching for another school employee in connection with the killing, officials said Monday.
Bolivar County deputy coroner Murray Roark said the dead man was in his mid-50s and was killed inside an office in Jobe Hall. He said officials are withholding his name for now. Cleveland police chief Charles “Buster” Bingham said during a news conference that authorities have identified Shannon Lamb as a “person of interest” in the shooting of history professor Ethan Schmidt. Lamb is no longer believed to be on the Delta State campus.
University spokeswoman Jennifer Farish said she was not yet able to identify the dead person, saying it was still an “active situation”. It’s unclear whether anyone else was wounded. Bingham also said police have information suggesting Lamb may have been involved in another slaying in the south Mississippi city of Gautier, about 300 miles (580 kilometers) away.
The lockdown began about 10.45am local time, with the university advising students, faculty and staff to take shelter and stay away from windows. Gautier police spokesman Matthew Hoggatt told the Sun Herald newspaper that a woman was found dead in her home in Gautier, and that Lamb is the suspect in her death.
The university’s Twitter account said the shooter was spotted near Jobe Hall. “We’re working right now under the assumption that both events are related,” Hoggatt said. “We hope that they are not. But at this point in time, information indicates that they probably are linked in some way, shape or form.”
Emergency management has set up command center. MS Governor's office and IHL have offered their assistance. Campus remains locked down. The 3,500-student university is in Cleveland, in Mississippi’s Delta region near the Arkansas-Mississippi state line. The school was first put on lockdown around 10:45am amid reports of an active shooter. Everyone on campus was told to take shelter, away from windows.
State and local law enforcement agencies have responded. Freshman Noah Joyner, 18, said he was shaken by the lockdown. Joyner hunkered down in a bathroom of his dorm building and heard others desperate to get in when reports of the active shooter spread.
Mississippi department of public safety spokesman Warren Strain said a man who is believed to be the shooter was still at large. He said a description of the person was not immediately available. “There were like people banging on the doors to have somebody let them in,” said Joyner, a swimmer at the college. “It was pretty terrifying to hear people banging on the door.”
The 3,500-student university is in Cleveland, in Mississippi’s Delta region near the Arkansas-Mississippi state line. Police swarmed the campus, sweeping buildings to search for the shooter while helicopters buzzed overhead. Officers equipped with body armor and rifles remained on the campus hours later.
“Fortunately for us, our public safety officers and university officials have trained many of us for active shooter situations,” Don Allan Mitchell, an English professor, wrote in a Facebook message to The Associated Press. “Many students are locked-down in classrooms, and professors and staff members are telling them the protocol. Plus, we are all texting and Facebooking each other to make sure we are safe.” Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said the suspect is no longer believed to be on the campus. He would not say how investigators reached that conclusion or say where the suspect is believed to be.
He said police helicopters were in the air, and officers were sweeping buildings. The slain professor directed the first-year seminar program and specialized in Native American and colonial history, said Don Allan Mitchell, an English professor at the school, who called him “a gentleman in every sense of the word.”
However, another English professor, Bill Hays, said the university did a poor job of communicating with faculty, staff and students about the emergency situation. “Dr. Ethan Schmidt was a terrific family man, a good friend, a true son of Peabody, Kansas, and his beloved Emporia State University,” he said.
“It’s really frustrating because there is no campus-wide updating from a central command center. Everything we’re getting is just rumors,” Hays said in a phone call from his office in Keithley Hall, across the street from the shooting site.