Gunshots at Tuskegee University sent terrified students running for their lives

TUSKEGEE, Ala. (AP) — Tuskegee University student Sid Guynn hid under a car when he heard the gunshots that ripped across his Alabama campus amid homecoming celebrations, then ran back to his dorm, frightened by what sounded to him like a machine gun.

“It was terrifying; I couldn’t find my phone or my brother,” Guynn said. His brother is not a student at the university, he said, and was visiting when the barrage of gunshots sent students diving to the ground or running for their lives.

The shooting left one man dead and injured at least 16 other people early Sunday, a dozen of them by gunfire, authorities said. An arrest was announced hours later. Many of the injured were students.

The man killed in the homecoming weekend shooting at Tuskegee University has been identified as 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, of Troy, Alabama, who was not a student, the local coroner said Monday.

Jaquez Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, was taken into custody while leaving the scene of the campus shooting and had been found with a handgun with a machine gun conversion device, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said. Myrick faces a federal charge of possession of a machine gun, the agency said in a statement. It did not accuse him of using the gun in the shooting or provide additional details.

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The agency did not say whether Myrick was a student at the historically Black university, where the shooting erupted as the school’s 100th homecoming week was winding down.

It was not immediately known if Myrick had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. He was being held in the Montgomery County jail, online booking records show.

Twelve people were wounded by gunfire, and four others sustained injuries not related to the gunshots, the state agency said. Several were being treated at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika and Baptist South Hospital in Montgomery, the university said in a statement.

Their conditions were not immediately released, but Macon County Coroner Hal Bentley said he understands that at least one of the people injured has been in critical condition.

The FBI joined the investigation and said it was seeking tips from the public, as well as any video witnesses might have. It set up a site online for people to upload video. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also was involved in the investigation, a local prosecutor said.

The school is no longer an open campus, Tuskegee University President Dr. Mark A. Brown said at a press conference Monday outside the campus’ main entrance. All students and faculty will have to wear their IDs while on campus.

Brown said there were security checks at all official school events, but the party where the shooting happened was not sanctioned by the school.

“We did not nor could we have planned for security at an event that was not approved in advance or sanctioned by the university,” Brown said. But he said the school administration would “take full responsibility” for “implementing corrective actions.”

The former campus security chief has been replaced, the president said, and the new security chief will conduct a thorough review of the shooting. When asked, Brown did not provide the name of the new head of campus security.

Brown said that classes were canceled for Monday and Tuesday, all students would be offered counseling, and there would be a town hall to address the community’s concerns. All students who live “in the vicinity of the shooting” will be given the opportunity to relocate, Brown said.

The shooting is the latest case in which a “machine gun conversion device” was found, something law officers around the nation have expressed grave concerns about. The proliferation of these types of weapons is made possible by small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online.

Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California.

“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in AP’s report on the weapons earlier this year.

After the Tuskegee University shooting, the 18-year-old Guynn said schoolwide group chats have been filled with messages of support for the injured victims, whom he said he knows personally. He came to Tuskegee this year from his home in Iowa because he wanted to learn in a tight-knit Black community, he said.

“Tuskegee, it feels like a family here,” Guynn said, adding that “everyone is connected.”

The shooting left the entire university community shaken, said Amare’ Hardee, a senior from Tallahassee, Florida, who is president of the student government association.

“This senseless act of violence has touched each of us, whether directly or indirectly,” he said at the school’s homecoming convocation Sunday morning.

Sunday’s shooting comes just over a year after four people were injured in a shooting at a Tuskegee University student housing complex. Two visitors to the campus were shot and two students were hurt while trying to leave the scene of what campus officials described as an “unauthorized party” in September 2023, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

About 3,000 students are enrolled at the university about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Alabama’s capital city of Montgomery.

The university was the first historically Black college to be designated a Registered National Landmark in 1966. It was also designated a National Historic Site in 1974, according to the school’s website.

Guynn said he hopes more security will prevent future gun violence on campus. He also said he doesn’t want the national attention to define the school and community he loves.

“For something like that to happen, it’s nothing like Tuskegee,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia, contributed to this report.