MSU shooter identified as former New Jersey resident

The gunman who killed three people and injured five others at Michigan State University Monday night has been identified as former New Jersey resident Anthony McRae, 43.

He fatally shot himself after an hours-long manhunt that police say ended with a confrontation that took place miles away from campus.

Police in Ewing Township, N.J., confirmed that investigators in Michigan had found a note with the gunman threatening two Ewing Township schools. Lt. Glenn Tettemer of the Ewing Police Department confirmed that McRae had ties to Ewing Township, but had not lived in the area for “several years.”

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All Ewing Township public schools were closed on Tuesday out of an abundance of caution. Ewing Township is in Mercer County, about four miles north of Trenton.

Investigators still were sorting out why McRae fired inside an academic building and the student union shortly before 8:30 p.m. Monday. The shootings led to a harrowing campus lockdown and a search for the gunman that ended roughly three hours later.

The dead and injured in the gunfire at Berkey Hall and the MSU Union, a popular place to eat and study, were all Michigan State students. Five remained in critical condition at Sparrow Hospital, said Denny Martin, a physician who fought back tears during a news conference.

Two of the dead were graduates of separate high schools in the Grosse Pointe district outside Detroit: Brian Fraser, a sophomore and president of Michigan State’s chapter of Phi Delta Theta fraternity; and Arielle Anderson, a junior who planned to become a pediatrician. Alexandria Verner, a graduate of Clawson High School in the Detroit area, also died.

The shooter was on probation for 18 months until May 2021 for possessing a loaded gun in a vehicle, according to the state Corrections Department. He also had two misdemeanors in 2006 related to driving with a suspended license.

The shooter appeared to most recently reside in East Lansing, where Michigan State’s main campus is located.

Michael McRae, the shooter’s father, told the Washington Post that his son “kept lying” about keeping a gun in their home after his son’s arrest in 2019.

“I told him to get rid of the gun,” the Michael McRae, 66, told the Post. “He kept lying to me about it and told me he got rid of it.”

McRae told the Post that his son was “depressed” and “overly stressed out” following his mother’s death from a stroke in 2020, and that he frequently stayed in his room for hours when he was home.

“He was a mama’s boy, and he never really got over that his mom was gone,” McRae said. “I could see that he was changing, but I never thought in my life that he would do something crazy like this.”

Ewing Township’s Tettemer said officers were alerted of a connection between the mass shooting in Michigan and a threat to Ewing Public Schools on Tuesday around 6 a.m. by New Jersey State Police.

Two Ewing public schools were named in a note found in the shooter’s pocket, according to Tettemer. He declined to comment on which schools were explicitly threatened.

The information also revealed McRae had a history of mental health issues, Tettemer said.

While all schools in Ewing Township remained closed for the day, Tettemer said the incident was isolated to Michigan and that there is currently no threat to Ewing schools.

Officers from Ewing and its partner agencies in surrounding municipalities will remain stationed at Ewing schools for the remainder of the day, Tettemer said. Some officers were beginning to return to their normal duties by 10:45 a.m.

Around 8:30 p.m. Monday, the gunman fired shots in one of the school’s academic buildings and the student union.

In a news conference, Michigan State’s Deputy Campus Police Chief Chris Rozman said that a motive or connections to the university were unknown.

“We have absolutely no idea what the motive was,” Rozman said. “There are still crime scenes that are being processed, and we still are in the process of putting together the pieces to try to understand what happened.”

When McRae was still at-large, police released a photo of him to media outlets and on social media, identifying him as a suspect. Rozman said an “alert citizen” recognized him from the photo, which led to the police confrontation where the shooter killed himself about five miles away from campus.

Students, meanwhile, recalled the previous night’s terror. Dominik Molotky said he was learning about Cuban history around 8:15 p.m. when he and the other students heard a gunshot outside the classroom. He told ABC’s Good Morning America that a few seconds later, the gunman entered and fired three to four more rounds while the students took cover.

“I was ducking and covering, and the same with the rest of the students. He let off four more rounds and when it went silent for about 30 seconds to a minute, two of my classmates started breaking open a window, and that took about 30 seconds to happen. There was glass everywhere,” Molotky said.

Claire Papoulias, a sophomore, described on NBC’s Today how she and other students scrambled to escape a history class through a window after the gunman entered from a back door and began firing.

“There was a boy in my class, and he was waiting outside the window, and he was catching people and helping people down,” she said. “As soon as I fell out of the window I kind of hit the ground a little. I just grabbed my backpack and my phone, and I remember I just ran for my life.”

The shootings took place in an area of older, stately buildings on the northern edge of the Michigan State campus, one of the nation’s largest at 5,200 acres. Just across busy Grand River Avenue lies East Lansing’s downtown, teeming with restaurants, bars, and shops.

“Our Spartan community is reeling today,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Michigan State graduate, said at the morning briefing.

President Joe Biden pledged his support during a phone call, she said.

“We mourn the loss of beautiful souls and pray for those continuing to fight for their lives. … Another place that is supposed to be about community and togetherness shattered by bullets and bloodshed,” Whitmer said.

Michigan State has about 50,000 students, including 19,000 who live on campus. As hundreds of officers scoured the campus, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit, students hid where they could Monday night.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.