The suspected shooter, identified by police as 18-year-old Steven Jones, was in custody, said Northern Arizona University Police Chief JT Fowler.
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According to police, a student produced a handgun during a late-night altercation near an all-Greek dormitory and shot four others – one of them fatally.
One person was killed and three were wounded during the incident. “I never thought it would happen here”, one student, Megan Aardahl, told CNN, describing how her room was just yards from where the shooting took place.
Our thoughts and supports continue to go out to Northern Arizona University and to the families of those involved in this tragedy.
NAUPD is working on the investigation with the Flagstaff Police Department at the scene.
The campus is not on lockdown, but school president Rita Cheng says: “This is not going to be a normal day at NAU”.
While the Arizona Board of Regents bans students form carrying guns around campus, they are allowed to store them in their vehicle. A freshman student was killed, and three other male students were hurt. The three injured students suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were being treated at Flagstaff Medical Center, Fowler said. G.T. also said that “nothing happened inside of [NAU’s] residence halls”, and that the incident was isolated to a parking lot outside the Mountain View Hall on the northeast end of NAU.
The 20-year-old graduated from Westview High School in 2013 and was now attending Northern Arizona University, according to the Facebook page.
Senator John McCain, representative for Arizona, released the following statement this morning.
NAU tweeted out just before 3 a.m. that the suspect is in custody.
Pursuant to the shooting questions were raised whether the shooting was motivated as a fraternity chapter shooting, with a few fraternity members of NAU’s Chi society telling the Washington Post that the shooting ‘was not a chapter related incident’.
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The shooting comes eight days after a rampage that left 10 people dead at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, an episode that brought new urgency to a long debate over stricter gun laws.
