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LAS VEGAS (AP) – It was a gunman killed three students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, before he died in a shootout with police, apparently not targeting students, according to two law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Frightened students and professors cowered in classrooms and dormitories as a gunman walked into UNLV’s Lee Business School on Wednesday and opened fire at noon on the fourth floor, where the offices of teachers and staff for accounting and marketing. The fourth person was seriously injured in the shooting, police said.
No students were killed in the shooting and all the victims were members of the school, the students announced on Thursday in X, first Twitter.
The university said those involved in the attack on Wednesday were all members of the teaching staff.
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The school identified two of the dead as business school professors Patricia Navarro-Velez and Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang. The school said that the third victim, also a teacher, will be identified after notifying the families, while the fourth teacher is being held in the hospital on Thursday.
Accounting professor Navarro, 39, holds a Ph.D. in accounting and is currently focusing on research in information cybersecurity and data science, according to the school’s website.
Chang, 64, has been an associate professor in the business school’s Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology department and has taught at UNLV since 2001. He holds degrees from Taiwan, Central Michigan University and Texas A&M University. according to his online resume. He received his Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Pittsburgh.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas student Carlos Casillas, 23, second from right, prays at the Las Vegas Convention Center reunion area where he was taken after after a deadly shooting at a Las Vegas strip, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
The authorities did not identify the person who attacked, the type of weapon used or the reason. But one of the police said that the gunman was a business professor who had been looking for a job at UNLV before the shooting. Another law enforcement officer identified the suspect as Anthony Polito, 67. All of these officers spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to make the information public.
Investigators searched an apartment near Henderson, Nevada, late Wednesday as part of an investigation and recovered several electronic devices. electronics, including Polito’s phone, said one of the officials.
Polito was a professor in North Carolina at East Carolina University’s Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management from 2001 to 2017, according to a statement released Thursday by the school. He resigned in January 2017 as an assistant professor.
One of Polito’s former students at East Carolina University, Paul Whittington, said Polito went on during class about his many trips to Las Vegas. Vegas. Polito told his students to visit twice each year, stay in different hotels and go to different clubs, Whittington said.
“It was very, very, very established in downtown Las Vegas,” Whittington said. “I think he was happy to go there.”
Polito also seemed disinterested in student evaluations at the end of each semester, Whittington said. Polito told Whittington’s class that he remembers the looks on the faces of students who gave him bad reviews and that he would show his confidence in who they were and what they were up to. sat down, pointing to chairs in the classroom, Whittington said.
“He always talks about the bad ideas he’s had,” said Whittington, now 33, who took Polito’s presentation to an operations management class in 2014. He didn’t get much, but one student every semester, or at least one student in every class, would get a bad evaluation. And he focused on those things.”
The attack at UNLV shocked a city that experienced the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history in October 2017, when a gunman became. killing 60 people and injuring over 400 after the fire opened from the window of a high-rise room at Mandalay Bay on the Las Vegas Strip, just miles from the UNLV campus.
Lessons learned from that shooting helped authorities work “seamlessly” in responding to the UNLV attack, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a press conference.
After firing the gun, the gunman went to several other floors of the business school before he was killed in a shootout with two police officers outside the building, which is next to the union. of university students, said UNLV police chief Adam Garcia.
Authorities issued the clarification about 40 minutes after the initial report of a gunshot.
It was unclear how many of the 30,000 students were on campus at the time, but McMahill said they were gathering outside the student union building to eat and play sports. If the police had not killed the attacker, “countless other lives would have been lost,” he said.
“No student should be afraid to pursue their dreams on a college campus,” the officer said.
Kevaney Martin, a substitute teacher at UNLV’s journalism school, said he took cover under the desk in his classroom, where another teacher and three students took shelter with him.
“It was scary. I can’t even begin to explain,” said Martin. “I tried to hold it together for my students, and tried not to cry, but the emotions are something I don’t want to go through again.”
Police work at the scene of a mass shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Las Vegas. The attack before noon saw police swarming the campus, which is just a few miles from the world-famous Las Vegas Strip as students holed up in classrooms. (Kevin Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)
According to Martin, he texted his friends and loved ones, hoping to get news that a suspect has been arrested. When another professor came into the room and told everyone to leave, they joined many others rushing out of the building. Martin had his students pile into his car and drove them out of campus.
“As soon as we left UNLV, we parked and sat quietly,” he said. “No one said a word. We were very surprised.”
Student Jordan Eckermann, 25, said he was in his business law class in a second-floor classroom when he heard a loud bang and a piercing alarm, sending students to their feet.
Some of his classmates ran out in panic, but Eckermann said he peeked outside the classroom before leaving. He said he saw a policeman wearing a bulletproof vest holding a long gun, while clothes, backpacks and water bottles were lying on the floor.
Minutes later, when he was outside, Eckermann said he heard gunshots coming from outside the business school, about 20 rounds. The air smelled of gunpowder. He said he walked out of the yard.
Classes were canceled Friday at the university, and UNLV’s basketball game at the University of Dayton, Ohio, was canceled Wednesday night because of the shooting. The Wrangler National Finals Rodeo also canceled events scheduled for Thursday night at the Thomas & Mack Center at UNLV.
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Finley reports from Norfolk, Virginia. Associated Press reporter Michael Balsamo in Washington; Ken Ritter and WG Ramirez in Las Vegas; Terry Tang in Phoenix; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.