How could this happen in a library?
That was the question many students and alumni were asking Thursday after a gunman opened fire outside Florida State University’s Strozier Library, injuring three people before being shot and killed by police. Any campus shooting is a tragedy, but many at the university seemed particularly shaken because of where this one took place. "It made me nauseous hearing about the shooting at FSU library," one alumna tweeted. "I used to study there every night and felt so safe."
The gunman was another Florida State alumnus, a 2005 graduate named Myron May who had since earned a law degree in Texas and recently returned to Tallahassee. May arrived outside the library around 12:30 Thursday morning and began shooting at students with a semiautomatic handgun, Michael DeLeo, chief of the Tallahassee Police Department, said in an afternoon press conference. May then entered the library, shot a library student-employee and reloaded his gun, before returning outside to face police. He did not attempt to go through the lobby's security turnstile, police said.
Police and the gunman fired more than 30 rounds at each other, DeLeo said. May's motive remains unclear, but police said that journals written by the gunman indicated that he was in a "state of crisis" and that he believed he was being "targeted" by the government. Two of the victims were hospitalized, including one who remained in critical condition Thursday.
At least 11 other shootings have taken place on college campuses in the last year, ranging from one-on-one student altercations to the mass violence that occurred at the University of California at Santa Barbara and, two weeks later,Seattle Pacific University. The number was even larger last year, with about two dozen shootings, but college students are actually much safer than similarly aged members of the general population, said Jen Day Shaw, associate vice president at the University of Florida and NASPA's Campus Safety Knowledge Community Chair.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/21/campus-police-praised-actions-against-gunman-who-struck-very-heart-campus