One dead in shooting at US university

One person was reported killed Tuesday in a shooting at the University of Purdue in the US state of Indiana, news reports said. The reports cite university officials confirming the fatality. One suspect was in custody, the university said on its website.

University police chief John Cox was quoted by USA Today as saying the gunman walked into a room in the electrical engineering building “with the intention of harming someone.” The suspect later walked out of the building and surrendered to a police officer.

The university was placed on lockdown after the shooting was reported around noon (1700 GMT). A Twitter post from the university advised students to “shelter in place.”

Police cleared the area and later narrowed the lockdown to just the electrical engineering building.

The university with an enrollment of about 39,000 students is in West Lafayette, Indiana, 100 kilometres south-east of Chicago.

Purdue spokeswoman Liz Evans told broadcaster CNN that after the arrest was made, operations at the school outside the electrical engineering building returned to normal.

It is the fourth school shooting in the US since December 13 when a 17-year-old high school student was killed at a school in a suburb of Denver. Two shootings occurred last week – one at a high school near Philadelphia and the other at a middle school in New Mexico; there were injuries but no fatalities in those incidents.

Voice of Russia, dpa