Las Vegas university shooting suspect who killed three was professor who applied for job

The man suspected of shooting three people dead at a Las Vegas university was a professor who had recently been rejected from a job at the school, a law official said.

Reports of shots fired at about 11.45am on Wednesday sent police swarming onto the University of Nevada (UNLV) campus.

Police said the incident started on the fourth floor of the building that houses UNLV’s Lee Business School.

The gunman went to several floors, killing three people and wounding a fourth, before he was killed in a shootout with two university detectives outside the building, said UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia.

Authorities said the threat was over about 40 minutes after the first report of an active shooter.

The suspect previously worked at East Carolina University in North Carolina, according to a law official who spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.

They added that the suspect had recently sought a job at the UNLV campus, but had been unsuccessful.

Police are yet to publicly identify the gunman, the victims or a possible motive.

The university is in the middle of “study week,” with some classes being held and final exams set to begin on Monday. It is unclear how many of the 30,000 students were on campus at the time.

Matthew Felsenfeld said he and about 12 classmates barricaded their door in a building near the student union.

“It’s the moment you call your parents and tell them you love them,” said Mr Felsenfeld, a 21-year-old journalism student.

Meanwhile, Professor Kevaney Martin took cover under a desk in her classroom, where another faculty member and three students took shelter with her.

“It was terrifying. I can’t even begin to explain,” Martin said. “I was trying to hold it together for my students, and trying not to cry, but the emotions are something I never want to experience again.”“Once we got away from UNLV, we parked and sat in silence,” she said. “Nobody said a word. We were in utter shock.”

The shooting has occurred in a city still scarred by one of the worst mass killings in US history on October 1, 2017, when a mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas killed 60 people and wounded hundreds more.

The White House said it is monitoring the shooting reported at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) “very closely.”

The nearby Las Vegas Harry Reid International Airport is experiencing flight impacts because of the incident, according to an alert from the Federal Aviation Administration.

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