Washington, Aug 28 (IANS): Mississippi State University on Thursday said a suspected shooter was taken into custody, just minutes after an alert was issued to tell students to seek shelter due to the active shooter situation.
The university first posted the warning at 10:25 a.m. on its official website. Five minutes later, the university announced that the shooter was in custody, Xinhua reported.
The campus emergency feed tweeted out an "all clear" notice just before noon. No injury was reported, said the university authorities.
The suspect was said to be a freshman from the university, and he reportedly had threatened to commit suicide and harm other students, according to local TV station WCIB TV.
The news of a shooter on campus immediately threw the university into hysteria as students scrambled to take the precaution against another shooting spree. A photo widely circulated on Twitter showed that a table and nearly a dozen desks were jammed in front of a classroom door.
The incident came just one day after two TV journalists were killed by a disgruntled gunman in an on-air shooting carnage in Virginia and two days after a 14-year-old male student with a pistol held several students and a teacher hostage at a high school in West Virginia.