Two students were shot and wounded at Delaware State University, prompting administrators mindful of the massacre at Virginia Tech to order a swift shutdown of the campus while police searched for the gunman.
Police identified two students as "persons of interest," questioning both of them, while students remained locked in their dorms and officers lowered gates to keep anyone from coming onto the campus of the 3,690-student historically black university.
"The biggest lesson learned from that whole situation at Virginia Tech is don't wait. Once you have an incident, start notifying the community," university spokesman Carlos Holmes said.
The shooting was reported to police at 12:54am on Friday. It happened as a group of students were returning from an on-campus cafe. A 17-year-old male student was in stable condition; a female student, also 17, was shot in the abdomen and in serious condition.
The two students were shot on the Campus Mall, between the Memorial Hall gymnasium and Richard S. Grossley Hall, an administrative building. Investigators believed the shootings may have been preceded by an argument at the cafe, and officials said it did not appear to be random.
"This is an internal problem," said Allen Sessoms, the university's president. "There are no externalities ... this is just kids who did very, very stupid things."
The male student, who was wounded in the ankle, refused to answer questions by police about the shootings, raising the likelihood that he knew his attacker, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
"This not an act of terrorism," university police chief James Overton said. "This was not a crazed gunman who found his way onto campus."
Campus officials acted much more swiftly than officials at Virginia Tech did five months ago, when administrators delayed notifying students nearly two hours after gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed his first two victims. By then, he had already started shooting 30 other people in a classroom building across campus.
A report by a panel appointed by Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine concluded that lives could have been saved if alerts had been sent out earlier and classes canceled after Cho killed his first two victims.
At Delaware State, officials did not wait. Within about 20 minutes of the shooting being reported to police, even as the victims were being taken to hospitals, campus police and residence hall advisers were telling students to stay in their dorm rooms, although not all were told there had been a shooting.
Before dawn, notices had been posted in dormitories and classes had been canceled.
The shootings happened under very different circumstances. The Virginia Tech rampage began at 7am as students thronged the campus and headed to morning classes; at Delaware State, it happened in the middle of the night. Also, the Delaware campus is about one-sixth the size of the Virginia Tech campus.
Students were still being advised on Friday afternoon to remain in their dorms, but were being escorted to the cafeteria for meals. Officials also made arrangements for students who wanted to leave campus for the weekend.
Timmara Gooden, 20, said in a phone interview from her dorm room that she and her suite mates kept each other calm and were making sure that their parents understand that they were OK.
Students were not even going into their dorm hallways.
"We don't want to walk out there, because we don't know what's going on," Gooden said.
Officials said access to the campus would remain limited yesterday and that yesterday's classes, a weekend farmers' market, and an alumni meeting had been canceled.
"It is a limited access day, that includes no media," Holmes said.
"We just want to settle down tomorrow, ease back into this thing," he said.
At the start of the semester, the campus held a memorial service for three students and an incoming student who were shot execution-style on Aug. 4 as they hung out at an elementary school in their hometown of Newark, New Jersey. Holmes said there was no indication that Friday's shooting was related in any way to the Newark killings.
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