Three people were killed in a shooting at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) campus on Wednesday (local time). Police confirmed that shot dead the suspect.
Nevada: Another dreadful shooting incident has been reported in the United States, claiming the lives of three innocent people in Las Vegas on Thursday (local time). The incident took place at the main campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). The bloodshed ended when the police shot and killed the suspect. According to the Las Vegas Police Department’s statement, three civilians were killed incident and the shooter was shot dead at the spot. Another person who was shot is in critical condition. The authorities have not identified the victims and it is also not clear that the suspect was gunned down by the cops or he committed suicide.
A professor at the school named Vincent Perez, told MSNBC (on phone) that he had heard several gunfire before taking cover on campus, Reuters reported
“I would say just seven, eight shots, one after another, loud and very loud,” he said. “As soon as we heard that, we ran back inside and we realized this is a real shooting, and there’s an active shooter on campus.”
Official details of the incident remained unclear.
After getting the emergency call, law enforcement officers “immediately responded and engaged the suspect,” university police spokesperson Adam Garcia said at the briefing. “The suspect is deceased,” Reuters quoted Perez as saying.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill stated assured the civilians that there is no longer any threat. Afte the dreadful incident left everyone shocked and UNLV campus and other branches of the university were shut for the day “out of an abundance of caution.”
As a precautionary measure, cops are still searching each building on the sprawling grounds to ensure “we don’t have additional victims or subjects,” the sheriff said.
The local police department stated that guns shots were reported around Beam Hall, a campus building that houses the business school. In separate post, cop also confirmed that there was an additional report of gunfire in the Student Union.
The shooting incident was reported on Wednesday afternoon and within half an hour Las Vegas police stated that, “The suspect has been located and is deceased.”
The UNLV campus, located less than two miles east of the Las Vegas Strip, has a student enrollment of some 25,000 undergraduates and 8,000 post-graduates and doctoral candidates.
The sheriff mentioned that students on the campus seemed significantly affected, much like the aftermath of a mass shooting in 2017. During that incident, a gunman fired from a high-rise hotel window onto a music festival below along the Las Vegas Strip, resulting in sixty deaths and hundreds of injuries. This event still stands as the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history.
In Washington, the White House reported that it was closely monitoring the situation in Las Vegas on Wednesday.