Wyo. man kills 2, self; attack locks down school

(AP) Wyo. man kills 2, self; attack locks down school
By MEAD GRUVER
Associated Press
CASPER, Wyo.
An attack at a small community college and a nearby neighborhood left three people dead, at least one from a sharp weapon as police tried to figure out how the violence unfolded in the community in the middle of Wyoming.

Police found the suspect and one of the victims dead at a science building on the Casper College campus, which was locked down for about two hours, school and police officials said. The other victim was found about two miles away. One of the two killed was a faculty member.

Authorities say the suspect used a sharp-edged weapon in at least one of the deaths.

The suspect wasn’t believed to be a Casper College student, but it did appear there was a relationship between him and the victims, Casper Police Chief Chris Walsh said. He didn’t identify the suspect or victims but said the victims were a male and a female.

“We’re locating next of kin and working on notification absolutely as fast as we can,” Walsh said.

He added authorities don’t believe there is any further threat to the community.

“I want to emphasize that this is a horrible tragedy,” Walsh said. “And I want the city to … just feel safe right now. There is no one at large.”

The attack at the two-year community college in Casper, about 250 miles northwest of Denver, occurred just before 9 a.m. while class was in session.

The college sent out a campus-wide alert via text message and email within two minutes of receiving word of the attack at 9:06 a.m., school spokesman Rich Fujita said.

The campus was locked down and the science building was evacuated. The lockdown ended about 11 a.m. after school officials received word police were no longer searching for a suspect, Fujita said.

There are fewer classes on Friday than any other day of the week at Casper College, so only between 1,500 and 2,000 of the college’s 5,000 students were there, he said.

Political science instructor Chris Henrichsen said he was showing the film “Frost/Nixon” to his Wyoming and U.S. government class when he stepped into the hall to get something for a student and was told a homicide had occurred on campus.

He went back to his classroom, where students were getting messages about the campus lockdown on their phones.

“We locked the door and waited for further instruction,” Henrichsen said.

The students were later sent home, but some who parked near a different campus building where the attack occurred had to leave their cars there, Henrichsen said.

About two miles away, Dave Larsen said he was headed to the gym when drove passed a body in a gutter with two people standing over it, one talking on a cellphone.

Larsen lives about a block from the location of the body, a well-kept neighborhood of mostly single-story houses.

Emergency vehicles had the street blocked off Friday afternoon.

Police provided some details in a news conference streamed live by the Casper Star-Tribune ( http://trib.com/).

Walsh said 33 law enforcement officers from different agencies responded to the college after receiving reports of the attack. He said authorities first thought it might have been an “active-shooter-type situation.”

“We quickly contained the building and started a sweep through the building,” he said.

Walsh said that within minutes of the initial call, there was another report of a traumatic injury about two miles southwest of campus. That victim was found in the street, the Star-Tribune reported.

Classes were canceled for the day. A meeting was held in the afternoon for the 150 teachers and students who remained. College president Walt Nolte addressed them, calling it the worst day of his more than 40 years in higher education. He encouraged the community to come together, Fujita said

“It is particularly painful because of our size,” Fujita said of the small, tight-knit campus.

Counselors were speaking to students and planned to be available through the weekend. About 450 students live on campus.

Classes were to resume on Monday.

“We agreed it doesn’t do any good to just set the students loose. It makes the most sense to have them come back to campus, where they can get help if they need help and come to terms with what happened,” Fujita said.

Casper is Wyoming’s second-largest city with a population of about 56,000. Wyoming residents refer to it as the “Oil City” because it’s a hub for the state’s oil industry.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead was traveling to Casper Friday afternoon to meet with the police and the head of the college.

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Associated Press writers Ben Neary in Cheyenne and Matt Volz in Helena, Mont., contributed to this report.