MSU campus starkly quiet after deadly shooting
EAST LANSING − The normally bustling campus of Michigan State University was unrecognizably quiet Tuesday morning, as police continued to investigate a mass shooting that killed three students and left five others in critical condition.
Shortly after the shooting was reported about 8:30 p.m. Monday, MSU officials had canceled all university-related activities for the next 48 hours. Classes were further canceled until Monday, Feb. 20, MSU interim President Theresa Woodruff said Tuesday.
On campus, police patrol cars could be seen blocking off a few common areas of traffic, including West Circle Drive near Beaumont Tower. MSU is the state’s largest university by undergraduate enrollment, but only a handful of students were seen walking along Red Cedar Road.
MSU campus scene: Few students, lots of officers
At the base of the Spartan Statue on campus, students and others had placed flowers to commemorate victims Tuesday morning.
Noah Luck, a sophomore packaging engineering major at MSU, was leaving a lacrosse practice as reports of the shooting surfaced. Luck’s phone started to blow up with messages of “get inside,” before he drove to his off-campus apartment and barricaded with his roommates.
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Luck, from Hartland, described the campus scene Tuesday morning as a “ghost town.”
“A lot of my friends went home. My parents definitely want me home," Luck said, standing near Beaumont Tower. “Right now, I just wanted to check it out and make sure that my fellow Spartans are OK.”
A heavier police presence was seen at the MSU Union, where yellow caution tape surrounded the building. Officers cycled in and out of the building, as patrol cars lined the parking lot facing nearby Grand River Avenue. The Union was one of the two buildings where the shooting occurred, with Berkey Hall being the other.
'There were many different rooms people were hiding in'
Few students were seen walking through the residential areas and classroom buildings near the Union, but traffic continued to flow nearby. Mo Talev, an MSU student, said he and other students had barricaded themselves in a room in a nearby library after getting text messages saying “shots fired.” The group remained in the room from the initial alerts about 8:30 p.m. Monday evening until 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, when the shelter-in-place was lifted.
“We were all studying for an exam I should be at right now,” Talev said Tuesday morning, about 9:30 a.m.
“We were trying to figure out what was going on first. I started getting texts from friends and family, ‘Are you good?’ I said we were hiding in the library, there were many different rooms people were hiding in. It was like a fever dream, honestly, it felt surreal.”
Talev, who is from metro Detroit, said he wasn’t sure what his plans were until classes resumed. Tuesday morning; he was just trying to connect with friends on campus.
'He walked in through the door and just started shooting people.'
Austin Delola, a sophomore at Lansing Community College, was at the Buffalo Wild Wings just across from the Union when the shooting began. He said before he and others in the restaurant could receive any alerts from campus authorities, a woman ran into the restaurant, crying and screaming about the shooting.
“She was in shock,” Delola said Tuesday, during his morning shift at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. “We ended up calming her down, asking what happened. She said he walked in through the door and just started shooting people.”
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Delola said restaurant staff locked the doors, and those at the establishment remained there until the shelter-in-place was lifted.
“I just went home (after) because my phone had died halfway through,” he said. “I just called everyone that was calling me during that and told them I was safe … it was a bit weird, everyone was just trying to make sure I was safe. They were relieved to hear from me after not hearing from me for hours.”
Contact Arpan Lobo: alobo@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @arpanlobo.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Usually bustling Michigan State campus eerily quiet after shooting
