A gunman at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas shot and killed three people, all of them faculty members, on Wednesday before being killed by campus police officers. He was later identified as a former professor at East Carolina University who had applied for a job at UNLV.
This is the 80th mass shooting of 2023 at a school or college in the United States, according to CNN.
Here’s what we know as of Thursday.
All of the victims were professors.
The university has identified two of the faculty members who were killed as Cha Jan (Jerry) Chang, a 64-year-old associate professor of management information systems, and Patricia Navarro-Velez, a 39-year-old assistant professor of accounting. Chang had taught at UNLV for 20 years, Navarro-Velez for five.
UNLV said the third person killed was also a faculty member, but did not disclose the victim’s identity, pending the notification of relatives. A fourth faculty member, also as yet unidentified, is in life-threatening condition.
Two law-enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the investigation told the Associated Press that the shooter had not appeared to target students.
The alleged gunman was a former professor.
The suspect has been identified as 67-year-old Anthony Polito, the Clark County sheriff said during a news conference.
Polito spent more than 15 years as a faculty member in the department of marketing and supply-chain management at East Carolina, and resigned in 2017 as a tenured associate professor, according to a statement released by the North Carolina institution and cited by the Associated Press.
A CV on a website bearing Polito’s name says that he earned a Ph.D. in operations management from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business and an M.B.A. from Duke University.
The suspect had reportedly applied for a job at UNLV.
Polito applied for “several” jobs at colleges in Nevada, including UNLV, and was rejected each time, the county sheriff, Kevin McMahill, said.
Before the shooting, Polito tried to send 22 letters addressed to faculty members across the country, McMahill said. It’s not yet known what was in those letters.
Polito also had a list of targets at both UNLV and East Carolina, none of whom were shooting victims, McMahill said.
The shooting happened in UNLV’s Lee Business School.
Polito allegedly opened fire at 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday on the fourth floor of Frank and Estela Beam Hall, which houses the business school. After going to several other floors, he was killed in a shootout with two university police officers outside the building, authorities said.
The police did not suggest a motive.
The university is closed through the weekend.
Keith E. Whitfield, UNLV’s president, said that all university activities had been canceled through Sunday. Officials were still evaluating campus operations for next week, Whitfield said.
This was the last week of fall classes at UNLV; final exams are scheduled to start on Monday.
