NEW YORK: Police in Rhode Island were searching for a suspect in a shooting at Brown University in Providence in which two people died and eight were seriously injured at the Ivy League school, officials said.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said at a news conference that police were still searching for the shooter, who struck Brown’s Barus and Holley engineering building, where exams were being held at the time. Officials said police were searching for a man dressed in black and were scouring local video cameras in the area for footage to get a better description of the suspect.
Smiley said authorities could not yet release details about the victims, including whether they were students. He deplored the shooting.
“We’re a week and a half away from Christmas. And two people have died today and eight others are in hospital,” he said. “So please pray for these families.”
Brown is located on College Hill in Providence, the state capital of Rhode Island. The university has hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories.
As news of the shooting spread, the school asked students to shelter in place.
Chiang-Heng Chien, a student at Brown University, told local television station WJAR that he was working in a lab with three other students when he saw the text about the active shooter situation a block away. They waited under the desks for about two hours, he said.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had been briefed on the situation, which he called “terrible.”
“All we can do now is pray for the victims and for those who were very seriously injured.”
Compared to many countries, mass shootings in schools, workplaces and places of worship are more common in the United States, where gun laws are among the most permissive in the developed world. The Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more victims were shot, counted 389 this year in the United States, including at least six at schools. Last year, the United States experienced more than 500 mass shootings, records show.
Complicating the manhunt, local media reported that downtown Providence was filled with vacationing shoppers and thousands of people attending concerts. Federal law enforcement and police from surrounding towns assisted in the search, officials said.
