A man with a pistol walked into a classroom at the University of North Carolina Charlotte late Tuesday afternoon and opened fire, fatally shooting two people and injuring four others on the last day of classes, the authorities said.
Chief Jeff Baker of the U.N.C.C. Police and Public Safety Department said at a news conference that three of those injured were in critical condition. The fourth had less serious injuries, he said.
The police disarmed the suspect and took him into custody at a building on campus, Chief Baker said. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department identified the suspect as Trystan Andrew Terrell, 22, and said that charges were pending against him. The police declined to elaborate on a possible motive for the shooting.
“One officer immediately went to the suspect to take him down,” Chief Baker said.
He said the gunman did not say anything when he was taken into custody. “Our officers’ actions definitely saved lives,” he said.
Just before 6 p.m., the campus’s office of emergency management reported that shots were fired near the Kennedy Building, an administrative building in the middle of campus.
Katie Ballard, 24, a graduate student in gerontology, was sitting in a classroom in a nearby building when her professor stepped out. The professor came back in and said she heard somebody had been shot. Then an alert popped up on a projector screen at the front of the class saying that gunshots had been fired close by.
“Run, Hide, Fight,” the alert said. “Secure yourself immediately.”
Ms. Ballard ran with about 30 other students to an empty room nearby and locked the doors.
Ms. Ballard never heard any gunshots, but she heard helicopters buzzing while locked in the room. She heard students running up and down the halls. Through the window, she saw a man who had been shot in the abdomen. A handful of paramedics crouched around him, tending to his wounds.