A person of interest was in custody Sunday after a shooting during final exams at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, though key questions remained unanswered more than 12 hours after the attack.
The attack on Saturday afternoon set off hours of chaos across the Ivy League campus and surrounding Providence neighborhoods as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter and urged students and staff to shelter in place. The lockdown, which stretched into the night, was lifted early Sunday, but authorities had not yet released information about a potential motive.
Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said that the person in custody was in their 30s and that investigators were not searching for anyone else but that no one has been charged yet. He declined to say whether the detained person had any connection to Brown.
The person was taken into custody at a Hampton Inn hotel in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Providence, where police officers and FBI agents remained Sunday, blocking off a hallway with crime scene tape as they searched the area.
The shooting occurred during one of the busiest moments of the academic calendar, as final exams were underway. Brown canceled all remaining classes, exams, papers and projects for the semester and told students they were free to leave campus, underscoring the scale of the disruption and the gravity of the attack.
The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the university’s engineering building, firing more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. As of Sunday morning, authorities had not recovered a firearm but did find two loaded 30-round magazines, the official said. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.
“Everybody’s reeling, and we have a lot of recovery ahead of us,” Brown University President Christina Paxson said at a news conference.
“Our community’s strong and we’ll get through it, but it’s devastating.”
As of Sunday morning, one student had been released from the hospital, said Paxson. Seven others were in critical but stable condition and one was in critical condition.
Some business remain closed in shocked city Many area businesses announced Sunday that they would remain closed. A scheduled 5K run was postponed until next weekend. Providence leaders said residents would notice a heavier police presence.
“We all, intellectually, knew it could happen anywhere, including here, but that’s not the same as it happening in our community, and so this is an incredibly upsetting and emotional time for Providence, for Brown, for all of us," Mayor Brett Smiley said at the news conference. “It's not something that we should have to train for, but we have.”
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.
Engineering design exams were underway. Outer doors of the building were unlocked but rooms being used for final exams required badge access, Smiley said.
Brown, the seventh-oldest higher education institution in the U.S., is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges with roughly 7,300 undergraduates and more than 3,000 graduate students.
