Officials: Univ. of S.C. shooting was murder-suicide
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A Thursday shooting at the University of South Carolina was a murder-suicide, South Carolina State Law Enforcement told CBS affiliate WLTX.
The shooting took place just after 1 p.m. in the Arnold School of Public Health on the school's Columbia campus. State law enforcement spokesman Thom Berry told the station it was an "isolated" incident, but didn't have further information on the circumstances leading up to the shooting.
He wouldn't say whether the two dead were students or faculty.
"There was no active shooter situation, other than the two individuals that are now deceased and were involved in this situation," Berry told the station.
The school initially issued a Carolina Alert via e-mail and Twitter around 1:20 p.m., reporting shots fired and telling the campus community to "seek safe shelter" and to "obey officials."
Around 2:15 p.m., the school issued another alert indicating there was "no longer an existing threat." The Arnold School of Public Health is on Assembly Street in downtown Columbia, a couple of blocks from the statehouse.
It remained closed Thursday afternoon.
Law enforcement officials told WLTX earlier that the shooter was inside the health building. An ambulance was seen leaving the scene and multiple buildings on campus were locked down.
Student Hayden Dunn, a senior from Myrtle Beach, said he was in the building about 1 p.m., getting in an elevator to change classes, when a police officer also got inside. Dunn said the officer asked whether anyone had heard gunshots, but they hadn't.
Dunn said he went to class, then an alarm sounded five minutes later, and people rushed outside. Another officer told him shots had been fired, he said.
"Otherwise, you wouldn't have known anything happened," Dunn said.
Some roads were blocked in the immediate area Thursday, but students still walked around campus, along with some vehicles that drove where they could. A school spokesman would not immediately comment on the shooting.