Skip to footer

Seattle shooting: College student disarmed the shooter, say police

Seattle shooting: A lone gunman, armed with a shotgun, opened fire Thursday in a building at the small Seattle university, killing one person before he was subdued by a student.

|
Elaine Thompson/AP
Seattle Police SWAT officers run toward a campus building following a shooting at Seattle Pacific University on Thursday, June 5, 2014, in Seattle.
  • By Manuel Valdes and Phuong Le Associated Press

| Seattle

A lone gunman armed with a shotgun opened fire Thursday in a building at a small Seattle university, killing one person before he was subdued by a student as he tried to reload, police said.

Police say the student building monitor at Seattle Pacific University disarmed the gunman and several other students held him until police arrived.

A man in his 20s died and a critically injured 20-year-old woman was taken to surgery, Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman Susan Gregg said.

A 24-year-old man and a 22-year-old man were in satisfactory condition. None of the victims was immediately identified.

About 4,270 students attend the private Christian university, which was founded in 1891 by the Free Methodist Church of North America. Its 40-acre campus is in a residential neighborhood about 10 minutes from downtown Seattle.

Jillian Smith was taking a math test when the lockdown was ordered.

She heard police yelling and banging on doors in the hallway. The professor locked the classroom door, and the 20 or so students sat on the ground, lining up at the front of the classroom.

"We were pretty much freaking out," said Smith, 20. "People were texting family and friends, making sure everyone was OK."

Smith said they sat in the classroom for about 45 minutes, before police came and escorted them out of the building. On the way, they passed the lobby where she saw bullet casings and what appeared to be blood in the lobby carpet and splatter on the wall.

"Seeing blood made it real," Smith said. "I didn't think something like this would happen at our school," she added.

The incident follows a spate of recent shootings on or near college campuses.

Last month, according to police, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured seven before turning his gun on himself in a rampage in Isla Vista, California, near two universities.

Seven people were killed and three injured when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at a tiny Christian school, Oikos University, in Oakland, California, in 2012. A gunman killed five people and injured 18 when he opened fire in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall in 2008.

In 2007, 32 people were fatally shot in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia before the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, killed himself.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Seattle shooting: College student disarmed the shooter, say police
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0605/Seattle-shooting-College-student-disarmed-the-shooter-say-police
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe