At least one person was killed and six others wounded in a shooting at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania late on Saturday, as students and alumni celebrated homecoming at outdoor festivities at the historically Black university, authorities said.
A person who had a firearm was detained, and officials are investigating the possibility that there was more than one shooter but don’t believe there is any active threat to the campus, Chester county’s district attorney, Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe, said during a brief news conference early on Sunday.
“We don’t have a lot of answers about exactly what happened,” he said. “What I will tell you is that today we’re operating as if this is not an incident where someone came in with the design to inflict mass damage on a college campus.”
Authorities say the shooting took place at around 9.30pm outside a large building called the International Cultural Center, where tents and tables were set up for tailgating and socializing after a football game earlier in the day.
“It was a chaotic scene and people fled in every direction,” the district attorney said. He urged anyone with video from the scene or other information that could help the investigation to contact the FBI.
Authorities weren’t sharing details about the victims, including their conditions or where the injured were being treated.
The campus is about 50 miles (80km) south-west of Philadelphia. Chester county detectives are leading the investigation, with support from state police and the FBI.
Saturday’s shooting is the latest in a disturbing trend of gun violence at homecoming games and celebrations across the nation this football season.
On Friday, five people were shot near Washington DC’s Howard University as the school celebrated homecoming weekend. Police later arrested two suspects and recovered three guns near the scene, and a statement from the university said a fight between the two individuals had resulted in gunfire.
Howard University officials said in a statement that the violence was not affiliated with the school and no students, faculty or staff were involved.
High school homecoming celebrations in Mississippi were interrupted by gun violence on 11 October when three separate shootings resulted in six people being killed and 18 injured.
The most fatal shooting took place in Leland, where four people died, according to John Lee, the mayor of the small city in western Mississippi’s Washington county. At least 16 were wounded in that incident, with four in critical condition airlifted to the state capital of Jackson and 12 others treated at local hospitals.
Around 200 miles (320km) to the south-east, in Heidelberg, Mississippi, police said a shooting during the local school’s homecoming weekend left two people dead. Later there were reports that a third shooting occurred at South Delta high school in Rolling Fork, just 40 miles south of Leland in the Mississippi delta, where two people were injured.
Late Saturday night, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said in a social media post that he was briefed on the shooting and offered the support of his administration and family.
“Join Lori and me in praying for the Lincoln University community,” he said.
Lincoln University’s police chief, Marc Partee, said the shooting devastated the school’s community on what was supposed to be a joyous day focused on the school’s legacy.
“If there was another word to describe that, that’s more impactful, I would use it,” he said, “but ‘devastated’ is a start.”
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