Brown University shooting: Two people dead and multiple people shot as police search for suspect

Two students are dead and at least nine others are injured after a gunman fired into a classroom at a prestigious Ivy League university in Rhode Island and appeared to walk off campus without a trace.

Saturday’s mass shooting at Brown University in Providence forced campus buildings and parts of the city into lockdown, with students barricading themselves in buildings for hours while hundreds of law enforcement officers swarmed the city.

The suspect appeared to have escaped before police arrived and — except for one brief surveillance video showing a person dressed in black rounding a corner outside the campus — all but disappeared.

More than 400 law enforcement officers — many from surrounding communities and some from the federal government — descended on the city to join the manhunt while others cleared university buildings and evacuated students.

Officials ordered residents to shelter in place as sirens flashed throughout the neighborhood. Students hid under desks, while bride and groom were forced to shelter at their wedding venue, according to WPRI.

A gunman fired into a final exam review session for a Principles of Economics class, according to economics professor Rachel Friedberg. The classroom was on the ground floor of an engineering building on campus and appears no other classrooms or buildings were targeted, according to officials.

Chang-heng Chien, 32, a PhD student at the university, told the Providence Journal that he and three others were working in a lab when they received a text from the school that an active shooting was underway approximately one block away.

Chien and other students locked the lab doors, turned off the lights, and hid under their desks for approximately two hours until police arrived and evacuated them from the building, he said.

Max McCord, a Brown University junior, told The Washington Post that his girlfriend — another student at the school — told him her brother had been shot through his thigh.

She called him at 4:15 p.m. ET to tell him about her brother’s injury, he said. The student said her brother had been studying in the engineering building when the suspect began shooting.

McCord, who is from Pittsburgh, said his girlfriend’s brother was in the hospital but was recovering well.

He said that while he was talking to his girlfriend, his roommate burst into their room, winded, after running when he heard gun shots.

The young men were in lockdown for hours after the shooting.

Across Providence, the Providence Place Mall shut its doors early, as did some nearby nightclubs and bars. Police gathered outside the AMP music venue to protect a Goose rock concert, and the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, who are set to play the New England Patriots on Sunday afternoon, were forced to shelter in a downtown hotel.

Back at Brown, two students had to re-live some of the most horrific events they had ever experienced.

Mia Tretta, a junior at Brown University, was wounded in a school shooting at her high school in Santa Clarita, California, in 2019, she told NBC News.

She was on campus when she received a flood of text messages and alerts about an active shooter on campus.

“No one in this country even assumes it’s going to happen to them,” she told the outlet. “Once it happens to you, you assume or are told it will never happen again. And obviously that is not the case.”

She said her community at Brown is “in shambles” after the attack.

Zoe Weissman, 20, is a sophomore at Brown University. She survived the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed and another 18 were injured.

She told MS NOW that she is “really angry that this is happening to me all over again.”

“And I’m just in shock,” she said.

After she survived the 2019 attack, “I have not been the same person I was that day ever again, and I assume it won’t be any different for the students at Brown,” she said.

There have been at least 154 incidents of gunfire at schools in the United States so far this year, according to gun safety advocacy group Everytown. At least 49 people have been killed and 135 injured in the attacks.

“Students on college campuses should be preparing for final exams and winter break — not enduring yet another all too familiar tragedy caused by gun violence,” Everytown president John Feinblatt said in a statement. “While we await details, one thing is clear: today’s shooting at Brown University is another unacceptable reminder of our nation’s gun violence crisis. We either take action, or we bury more of our kids.”

While students hid or scrambled to a Providence reunification site, the shooter remained somewhere in the dark.

Across three evening press briefings, reporters peppered officials, asking how there could be so little information about the suspect nearly four, seven and eight hours after the attack.

Asked whether officials believed the shooter was still in the area, Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters “we don’t know.”

In a video released late Saturday night, a suspect can be seen dressed in all black walking away from the engineering building and turning a corner before disappearing off-frame. There is no gun in the photo, and the shooter’s face is not visible.

“We know there is no clear shot of the face,” Mayor Smiley said.

Law enforcement and local officials asked residents in the area to check their doorbell and exterior cameras for any sign of the shooter, or to call in any tips, no matter how small.

After the shooting, President Donald Trump offered his condolence to the victims.

“I’ve been fully briefed on the Brown University situation, what a terrible thing it is, and all we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt it looks like,” Trump told reporters as he returned to the White House. “We’ll inform you later as to what’s happening, but it’s a shame,”