Authorities to release person of interest detained in US university shooting

Providence: A person of interest detained after a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island that killed two students and injured nine will be released after an investigation took law enforcement authorities in a “different direction”, officials said.

The disclosure, made at a hastily convened news conference, represents a stunning turn of events in an investigation into killings that rattled the Ivy League campus and came more than 12 hours after officials had announced that they had taken a person into custody in connection with the attack.

The release means that whoever is responsible for the shooting may remain at large.

“We know that this is likely to cause fresh anxiety for our community,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said.

The attack on Saturday afternoon (Sunday morning AEDT) set off hours of chaos across the Providence campus and surrounding neighbourhoods as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter and urged students and staff to shelter in place before lifting the lockdown on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, officials took a person into custody who two people familiar with the matter identified as a 24-year-old man from Wisconsin. That individual, whose name was never released by authorities, is now being released.

“I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction and then you have to regroup and go in another, and that’s exactly what has happened over the last 24 hours or so,” Rhode Island Attorney-General Peter Neronha said.

Officials declined to elaborate on why the man was detained in the first place.

“There was a quantum of evidence which justified detaining this person as a person of interest,” Neronha said.

Authorities said they believed an unidentified man dressed in black and pictured walking from the scene in surveillance footage to be the person they were still looking for. They are yet to release information about a potential motive.

FBI director Kash Patel said earlier on Sunday in a post on X that the person of interest had been detained in a hotel room in the Rhode Island town of Coventry, a 30-minute drive from the Brown campus.

The shooting occurred during one of the busiest moments of the academic calendar, as final exams were under way. Brown cancelled all remaining classes, exams, papers and projects for the semester and told students they could leave campus, underscoring the scale of the disruption and the gravity of the attack.

As police scoured the area for the shooter, many students remained barricaded in rooms while others hid behind furniture and bookshelves. One video showed students in a library shaking and wincing as they heard loud bangs just before police entered the room to clear the building.

University president Christina Paxson teared up while describing her conversations with students both on campus and in the hospital.

“They are amazing and they’re supporting each other,” she said at a news conference. “There’s just a lot of gratitude.”

The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, firing more than 40 rounds from a 9mm handgun, a law enforcement official told AP.

One of the nine wounded students had been released from the hospital, Paxson said. Seven others were in critical but stable condition, and one was in critical condition.

Durham Academy, a private K-12 school in Durham, North Carolina, confirmed that a recent graduate, Kendall Turner, was critically wounded. The school said her parents were with her.

“Our school community is rallying around Kendall, her classmates, and her loved ones, and we will continue to offer our full support in the days ahead,” the school said.

On Sunday evening (Monday AEDT), city leaders, residents and others gathered at a park to honour the victims. The event originally was scheduled as a Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah lighting.

“For those who know at least a bit of the Hanukkah story, it is quite clear that if we can come together as a community to shine a little bit of light tonight, there’s nothing better that we can be doing,” Smiley said at a news conference earlier in the day.

Smiley said he visited some wounded students and was inspired by their courage, hope and gratitude. One told him that active shooting drills done in high school proved helpful.

“The resilience that these survivors showed and shared with me is frankly pretty overwhelming,” he said.

Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the first-floor classroom at the Barus & Holley building, a seven-story complex that houses the school of engineering and physics department. The building includes more than 100 laboratories, dozens of classrooms and offices, according to the university’s website.

Outer doors of the building were unlocked but rooms being used for final exams required badge access, Smiley said.

Emma Ferraro, a chemical engineering student, was in the lobby working on a final project when she heard loud pops. Once she realised they were gunshots, she darted for the door and into a nearby building where she waited for hours.

Eva Erickson, a doctoral candidate who was the runner-up earlier this year on the CBS reality competition show Survivor, said she left her lab in the engineering building 15 minutes before shots rang out.

The engineering and thermal science student shared candid moments on Survivor as the show’s first openly autistic contestant. She was locked down in the campus gym following the shooting and shared on social media that the only other member of her lab who was present was safely evacuated.

Brown senior biochemistry student Alex Bruce was working on a final research project in his dorm across the street from the building when he heard sirens outside.

“I’m just in here shaking,” he said, watching through the window as officers surrounded his dorm.

Brown, the seventh-oldest higher education institution in the US, is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, with roughly 7300 undergraduates and more than 3000 graduate students.

AP, Reuters

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