LAS VEGAS (AP) — Police said a suspect was found dead Wednesday as officers responded to an active shooter and reports of multiple victims at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The university said on X, formerly Twitter, the shooter was at the Beam Hall, Frank and Estella Building, home of UNLV’s Lee Business School, and that police were responding to an additional report of shots fired at the nearby student union.
Las Vegas police posted on X that a suspect “has been located and is deceased” about 40 minutes after the initial alert was posted.
“This is not a test,” the university wrote. “RUN-HIDE-FIGHT.”
An Associated Press reporter saw a team of SWAT officers with FBI insignia move as a group onto campus just before 1 p.m., soon after police reported the dead suspect.
University officials on social media urged anyone on campus to continue sheltering in place, saying: “This remains an active investigation.”
Matthew Felsenfeld said he and about 12 classmates barricaded their door in a building near the student union.
“It’s the moment you call your parents and tell them you love them,” said Felsenfeld, a 21-year-old journalism student.
He said he didn’t hear gunfire or see anyone injured but that he saw police staged to enter the neighboring building. A short while later, police came and ushered them out.
“The situation is super sad,” Felsenfeld said. “Every single year we’re seeing more and more shootings. What are we going to do about them? There’s legislation, but is it going to pass? You just never know.”
Pierre Lescure, a UNLV senior, was riding his bicycle from home to campus for a meeting when he said about 10 police cars drove pass him.
“They drove too fast and there was no ambulance, just cops. It was clearly a shooting,” Lescure said. “It could not be something else.”
Lescure stopped about a block from the school. He saw a helicopter flying over the heart of the campus and a crowd walking out. Lescure stayed for about five minutes but left after receiving notifications the shooting was still an active scene.
UNLV has more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at its 332-acre campus is less than 2 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip.
The shooting occurred in a city still scarred by one of the worst mass killings in U.S. history, the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas, in which 60 were killed and hundreds more wounded. The UNLV campus is just over three miles from that location.
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Associated Press reporter Russ Bynum contributed to this report from Savannah, Georgia.
