A masked student wielding an AK-47 terrorized the University of Texas at Austin as he ran across campus on Tuesday shooting randomly but hurting no one until he killed himself, officials said.
The university, citing the coroner, identified the gunman as 19-year-old Colton Tooley, a second-year math major.
It was unclear how many shots were fired before Tooley killed himself in the university’s main library.
Law professor Randall Wilhite saw the gunman running down the street with an assault rifle and firing bullets randomly and with no apparent attempt to target scores of students making their way to class around 8am.
“I wasn’t sure it was real until I saw the bullets strike the ground to my left,” Wilhite told CNN.
“My first thought was maybe it was a game and I looked around for somebody else immediately,” Wilhite told CNN. “I couldn’t see anyone else involved.”
The shooter was tall, slim and was wearing a dark suit and tie. His face was covered with a ski mask, Wilhite said, adding that the suspect ran at a relaxed gait.
Student Andrew McWaters told KVUE-TV that the gunman “smiled at us and waved and ran right past us.”
Police scoured the campus for hours looking for a potential second suspect after receiving conflicting descriptions of the shooter.
The university used sirens, loudspeakers, text messages, e-mail alerts and its Web site to warn its nearly 50,000 students and thousands of staff members.
“The person involved in this morning’s shooting on campus has been confirmed dead on the sixth floor of the Perry-Castaneda Library from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the university said in a notice on its Web site.
“Law enforcement are searching for a second suspect. If you are off campus, STAY AWAY. If you are on campus, lock doors, do not leave your building,” the statement said.
Specialized police tanks and armored vehicles patrolled the sprawling campus. Bomb sniffing dogs were also searching the campus as a precaution, police told a press conference.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese