Five people were wounded in a shooting that interrupted a homecoming week celebration at Morgan State University in Baltimore on Tuesday and prompted an hourslong lockdown at the historically Black college.
The five victims were not the intended targets, police said in an update. They believe at least one person started shooting after a dispute between two groups.
All classes, homecoming activities and the homecoming football game are canceled until further notice, the school’s president said Wednesday afternoon.
"Regarding Homecoming, regrettably for the very first time in Morgan’s history all activities planned around Homecoming will be either cancelled or postponed until the perpetrator(s) of this atrocity have been found and brought to justice," David Kwabena Wilson said in a statement.
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Four of the shooting victims are students at the university, Morgan State Police Chief Lance Hatcher said. The five victims, four males and one female, are between ages 18 and 22. Their injuries were not life-threatening, Police Commissioner Richard Worley told reporters.
Baltimore Police released a video Wednesday asking for help identifying possible persons of interest. In the YouTube video, four people can be seen walking in the same direction. Anyone with information in reference to the identity of these individuals is urged to call detectives at 410-396-2444 or Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7Lockup.
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No arrests were announced, and police did not release information about a suspect or suspects. Worley said that investigators didn’t know how many shooters were involved.
"This was such a senseless act of violence perpetrated on our community after what was a family-filled and fun evening of celebrating the pageantry and beauty of our students. But Morgan is a strong family and we will march on with determination to keep moving on," Wilson said in a statement.
Police believe there was more than one person with a weapon. They’re trying to figure out how many guns were fired. Investigators say the shooting started as a dispute between groups and that one person was the target.
'Everyone started running'
The shooting happened shortly after the coronation of Mister & Miss Morgan State at the Murphy Fine Arts Center, as students were heading to a campus ball.
Konnor Crowder, a sophomore from Baltimore, said he and his friends had been waiting for the coronation ball to start when they saw people running across the campus.
“First I was wondering what they were running for, then I was wondering where we should go,” he said.
“We saw two gunshots hit the window and everyone started running. It was chaos,” another student said.
Worley said police heard gunshots and several dorm windows shattered, so officials initially thought there was an active shooter on campus and followed appropriate protocols. He said they ended the shelter-in-place order at about 12:30 a.m., after SWAT officers cleared a building where a suspect may have run.
Students sheltered in place for about four hours, as police went room to room looking for suspects.
Shortly after midnight, dozens of students wearing gowns and suits started trickling out of the arts center, where they had been sheltering. Many were trying to process the chaos and fear that overwhelmed an evening of festivities.
Kamani Bell, a freshman who lives in the Thurgood Marshall Dormitory, said he heard the shots from his room. He said an email from the RA for the building had warned residents about construction earlier that day, and that's initially what he assumed the commotion was.
“I'm going to look out the window and see what's going on because I'm hearing something. So now I look, I see everyone like running and fleeing from the scene. So, then I realized it was a shooting,” Bell said.
Video showed Bell in his room with friends, lifting his hands up as police forced open the door in their room-by-room search.
On Tuesday, Bell headed back up to his home in Boston to recover from the emotional toll of the shooting.
Orange evidence markers were visible on the ground in front of a building next to the dorm where the shooting occurred. Yellow crime tape encircled the area as officers used flashlights to search for evidence.
Parents gathered at a media staging area outside a police blockade at the south entrance to campus. James Willoughby, a Morgan State alum whose daughter is a freshman, said he wasn’t leaving until he laid eyes on her. “I’m gonna be here until I can physically see her,” he said.
Glenmore Blackwood came to the campus after hearing from his son, a senior who told him the shooting occurred just as the coronation was concluding.
Blackwood said his son was sheltering in place in the arts center's auditorium. He sang in the ceremony and was planning to host a prayer service afterward.
“That’s my son. He’s going to make sure I know he’s OK,” Blackwood said. “It’s just sad. They were doing a good thing — an event to promote positivity — and all this negativity happens.”
Other parents were unnerved about security, and frustrated by what they called a lack of communication from school officials.
Jose Videjo drove to Baltimore from New York to pick up his freshman daughter. He told News4 that he first heard about the shooting from social media, not from the school.
"As we were waiting for official news from the campus, or from any kind of authority figure, there was none," Videjo said Tuesday night. "So basically we were relying on the news reports that were mostly rumors. So we were nervous, we don't know what's true or what's not. And they took so long, and the information they gave out was so little, that we still don't know what really happened. We don't know what's going on. We don't know if the campus is safe."
“It is unfortunate that this tragedy happened here tonight,” he said. “By no means will it define who we are as a university.”
The university, which has about 9,000 students, was founded in 1867 as the Centenary Biblical Institute, with an initial mission of training men for ministry, according to its website. It moved to its current site in northeast Baltimore in 1917, and was purchased by the state of Maryland in 1939 as it aimed to provide more opportunities for Black citizens.
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Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott noted recent declines in the city’s homicide rate and said the shooting Tuesday indicates a need for national gun reform.
“We have to deal with this issue nationally,” he said. “We have to get serious about guns.”
Stay with NBC Washington for more details on this developing story.
