Four people were shot Thursday afternoon on the campus of Seattle Pacific University, and a suspect was in custody, police said.
Officer Drew Fowler confirmed the victims were transported for medical care after the shooting late Thursday afternoon.
The Seattle Fire Department said on its verified Twitter account that medics took four gunshot victims to Harborview Medical Center; a man and a woman had life-threatening injuries, and another man and another woman were in stable condition. It wasn’t clear whether the suspected gunman as injured.
Police had initially said they were searching for a second suspect armed with a handgun, but a short time later they said they were no longer looking for anyone else.
SPU student Jordan Heff was in class when he heard gunshots coming from a classroom next door, the Seattle Times reported.
“I was in physics and people heard a loud bang – we thought it was a science experiment. We heard crying and yelling outside our door. We walked out and there were blood stains all over the carpet.”
Gloris Jones, also an SPU student, to the Times she was walking from Otto Miller Hall with her mother, Mary Jones, who is visiting from Michigan. Gloris Jones received a text message from a friend who said he had been shot. She said sent five or six messages to her friend, a rising senior, but he didn’t reply.
“I don’t even know where he is,” Gloris Jones said as she hugged her mother. “And you want to make sure he’s OK.”
About 4,270 students attend the private Christian university, which was founded in 1891 by the Free Methodist Church of North America. Its 40-acre campus is in a residential neighborhood about 10 minutes from downtown Seattle.
The university posted online that “the campus is in lockdown due to a shooting near Otto Miller Hall.” A woman who answered the phone at the school’s security office quickly disconnected, saying no one could talk.
The incident follows a spate of recent shootings on or near college campuses.
Last month, according to police, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured seven before turning his gun on himself in a rampage in Isla Vista, California, near two universities.
Seven people were killed and three injured when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at a tiny Christian school, Oikos University, in Oakland, California, in 2012. A gunman killed five people and injured 18 when he opened fire in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall in 2008.
In 2007, 32 people were fatally shot in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia before the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, killed himself.
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