ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — One person is dead and another wounded following a shooting early Friday at a University of New Mexico dormitory that prompted the evacuation of hundreds of students and a campuswide search for the suspect.
The campus was closed and yellow tape cordoned off a student housing area as authorities conducted a sweep for the suspect. Investigators also gathered around a vehicle that was taped off in a parking lot.
The two people shot were inside a dorm building where they had been visiting a student, but they were not students themselves, said Lt. Tim Delgado with the University of New Mexico Police Department. He said a suspect remained at large as of midafternoon, and it was unknown if that person remained on campus.
A shelter-in-place order remained in place while police evacuated parts of the campus.
“We had a student orientation going so there were like 400 kids in dorms, so we wanted to make sure they were safe and they are safely off campus now,” Delgado said.
Officials issued an initial alert just before 3:30 a.m. that a shooting had taken place.
Campus police arrived at the Casas del Rio housing center to find two people with gunshot wounds — one dead and the other with non-life-threatening injuries.
Another alert asking people to shelter in place was sent out on social media just after 6 a.m. "Multiple law enforcement agencies are on scene and actively investigating," the university said.
Mikey Beck, who was staying in student housing this week as part of new student orientation at the university, said he heard gunshots overnight and saw what appeared to be an injured person hiding in some bushes. Two other people jumped out of a dorm window and ran, he said.
Beck said he was excited to start his freshman year but the incident was disconcerting. “It’s really sketchy out here. Just being in Albuquerque is really scary,” he said.
Not far from the dorms, a line of university buses waited for students to board, many of them carrying backpacks and pulling small luggage carts with their belongings. The university was conducting a “staged, tactical evacuation,” spokesperson Cinnamon Blair said in an emailed statement. People were told not to move without direction from campus police.
Further details including who was shot and whether any students were involved were not immediately released by authorities, nor was a description of the suspect.
Casas del Rio is a four-building complex with furnished suite apartments that combined have more than 1,000 beds, according to the Lobo Development Corp.
The university in central Albuquerque has about 23,000 students during the school year. New students like Beck have been visiting as part of weekly scheduled orientations ahead of the fall semester, which begins in about three weeks.
New Mexico’s largest city has struggled with violent crime in recent years, particularly among juveniles. District Attorney Sam Bregman, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, has called for state lawmakers to do more to address what he describes as a crisis.
The plea for legislative action comes amid violence in New Mexico involving young suspects, including a fatal hit-and-run in Albuquerque and a shooting in Las Cruces in March that killed three and wounded 15 others.
Prosecutors, law enforcement and Republican lawmakers have pressed Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to convene a special legislative session to address the state’s crime problem. Despite voicing her disappointment with the Democratic-controlled Legislature at the end of the last session, the governor has not given recent indications that she will be calling lawmakers back to Santa Fe.
___ Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
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