Shooting Suspect Is Case Western Grad

A camouflage-clad gunman who killed a student and injured two other people during a seven-hour standoff at Case Western Reserve University's business school was a graduate who had sued an employee at the school, authorities said Saturday.

Biswanath Halder, 52, of Cleveland, carrying two guns, wandered the halls of the university's Peter B. Lewis Building, firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition on Friday, police Chief Edward Lohn said Saturday.

Authorities said 93 people were trapped inside the building for hours, hiding in offices, classrooms and closets.

The university employee who Halder had sued was in the building but escaped during the standoff, University President Edward Hundert said.

He said the original lawsuit, which accused the employee of having "added and deleted things from a personal Web site" belonging to Halder, was dismissed. Hundert said Halder had lost an appeal about a month ago.

"It's obviously an incredibly sad day for this campus," Hundert said. "People come to a place like this to learn and to grow and to make discoveries and not for this kind of tragedy and violence."

CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta, in Cleveland, says prosecutors intend to file murder charges against Halder.

Halder, who suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder, was to be released into police custody Saturday, a spokeswoman at Huron Hospital said. Lohn said Halder - who was wearing a wig and "a kind of World War II Army helmet" - also had been hit in the bulletproof vest he had been wearing.

The two people who were injured - a man shot in the buttocks and a woman shot in her collar bone - were released from Huron Hospital on Saturday, authorities said.

A day after the shootings, the rain-soaked campus was nearly deserted a week after classes had ended. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung around the building and a police cruiser guarded the shattered glass back door that the gunman had busted through. A few bouquets of flowers and a planter with yellow buds were placed in front of the building, which the university closed until further notice.

The business school's distinctive design, with hallways that dip and swerve, complicated the job for police, Lohn said. He described the SWAT team's chase of the suspect as "almost a cat and mouse game."

Lohn said a SWAT team engaged in "firefights" throughout the building with Halder and finally cornered him in a room. Police weren't sure when Halder was shot, but said he was apprehended without incident.

"He gave up and he was taken into custody," Lohn said.

Hundert said Halder received a master's degree in business administration in 1999 from Case Western.

Campbell described the victim - identified as Norman Wallace, a 30-year-old graduate student from Youngstown - as a "young man with hope and promise" who was trying to earn his MBA.

An autopsy was planned for later Saturday, but Joseph Felo, Cuyahoga County deputy coroner, said the preliminary cause of death was a gunshot wound. A hospital official said the wound was to the chest.

Students and faculty members scrambled to get out of the building after seeing the gunman fire indiscriminantly. Those who remained inside stayed in contact with loved ones and co-workers through e-mail and telephone calls.

One man lay on the ledge of a third-floor balcony and signaled police to help him get down. A woman sprinted from the building when she had the chance.

"We saw the shadowy figure walk by the door," said Gregory Stoup, 38, an economic research director at the university, who along with four other people had barricaded his office's smoked-glass door with furniture.

"He was shooting down at the ground, yelling inaudible cries, sort of a high-pitched scream. We could hear the shell casings clinking on the ground," Stoup said.

About four hours after the first shots were fired, rescuers began taking people out of the building, and they were reunited with family members waiting at a campus auditorium.

Officers had appealed to the man to call a designated police phone number, but it was not clear if he had. By early evening, two dozen SWAT officers, holding shields and wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, moved inside.

Sachin Goel, 26, a master's student from India, said he was talking with two friends on the first floor outside the cafeteria when the gunman approached and shot one of his friends.

Goel and his other friend dove under a table and the gunman fired at them.

"But he couldn't get us. And then he again shot at us and we turned the table and put it in front of us," Goel said.

Carolyn Solis, who works in the admissions office for the university master's degree program, said she went into the building's atrium after hearing what she thought were firecrackers and seeing students running.

"The gunman was there pointing at me and two other students," she said. He fired and missed, she said.

Solis and five other people barricaded themselves in her office by putting a five-drawer file cabinet in front of the glass doors.

"We kept each other calm. We kept each other company," she said.

Case Western is at University Circle, a park-like setting of cultural, medical and educational institutions on the eastern edge of downtown. Of the 9,500 who attend the university, 1,600 students are enrolled in the Weatherhead School of Management, which is housed in the $62 million Lewis building.

It opened in the fall and was designed by Frank Gehry, who also created the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain. About five stories high, the building has a curving roof on the south side instead of walls. The roof is made of 20,000 stainless-steel shingles, that seemingly tumbles to the ground.

Lewis is an art collector and the billionaire chairman of Progressive Insurance who gave Case $37 million toward the building's construction.