Suspected Savannah State gunman caught

Savannah — A 19-year-old man faces aggravated assault and possibly other charges in the shooting of a fellow student Friday on the campus of Savannah State University, police said.

Devon McIntosh surrendered after a police dog sniffed him hiding in the trunk of his car on campus about five hours after the late-morning shooting, police said.

“He actually put his hands up,” said campus Police Chief Thomas Trawick. “I’m assuming he was there just to conceal himself until he had the cover of darkness to make his escape.”

McIntosh and the wounded student knew each other, authorities say.

“It was not a random shooting,” Trawick said at a news conference. “This was individuals who knew each other, and there was an altercation.”

The victim, whose name was not released, had surgery for wounds to the arm and abdomen, Trawick said.

“It sounds like he’s going to make it,” he said.

After the 11:45 a.m. shooting, a SWAT team surrounded an apartment building in University Commons where McIntosh lived. Authorities had evacuated the building and officers had recovered the handgun used, Trawick said.

McIntosh and the shot student were not roommates, but both lived on campus, said Claud Flythe, the historically black university’s vice president of administration.

Four students who witnessed the shooting identified McIntosh within 15 minutes, Flythe said. Authorities found information about McIntosh’s car and a tip led them to it a short distance from the shooting, Trawick said.

Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Judy Pal said McIntosh was in jail, but she did not know if he had an attorney.

Dr. Tara Cox, a university marine biologist, said students and faculty were alerted through an automated messaging system.

“We just locked the doors and kept the students that were in the building in the building,” she said.

Colleges across the country implemented text message and e-mail warning systems after a gunman killed 32 people before shooting himself last year at Virginia Tech. Savannah State’s Web site allows students to sign up for the emergency notices.

The campus of about 3,400 students along Georgia’s coast was locked down after the shooting but reopened after McIntosh was in custody. The school that was founded in 1890 is the state’s oldest public historically black college.

Junior Charvaris Dewberry, 20, said he was in his dorm room when a friend called about the shooting. He said he tuned in to television news coverage because the university was providing scant information.

Dewberry said he and most of his friends are not enrolled in the emergency alert program.

Associated Press writers Greg Bluestein, Dorie Turner and Walter Putnam contributed to this report.