Anthony Dwayne McRae Wiki

    Anthony Dwayne McRae Biography

The crazed shooter who fatally shot three students and left five others in critical condition at Michigan State University was identified Tuesday as 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae.

The gunman was identified when police confirmed that he was found dead from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound at 11:35 p.m., just over three hours after he first opened fire.

Police previously said the killer was not believed to be connected to the university, and police did not disclose a possible motive in Tuesday morning’s update.

Confirmed Death

They confirmed that the three dead and five injured were students.

Shots were fired, and students were killed, at two locations on the sprawling East Lansing campus, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.

McRae first began firing inside an academic building called Berkey Hall, where two of the dead were found, before moving on to fire at the MSU Union building, which houses a student cafeteria, where a third fatality was found.

Shooting

A survivor told the “Today” show Tuesday morning that the gunman had been silent when he burst through the back door of the classroom and began shooting at the approximately 20 students inside.

Claire Papoulias recalled hearing “three or four shots directly behind” his head, immediately falling to the ground when someone yelled that there was a shooter.

At that moment, I thought I was going to die. She was so scared,” she told the NBC Breakfast Show, praising other students for her heroic run to smash open windows to help them escape.

During the carnage

During the carnage, she called her mother, Natalie Papoulias, who “heard about three shots and yelling” about some of the gunshots at the other end.

“It was my worst nightmare,” her mother said, and she said she felt her legs give out as she rushed into her car to race to campus.

“I mean, I feel like she literally dodged a bullet.”

Videos posted online showed scores of terrified students running across campus as officers tried to take command of the chaotic scene.

Following the first report of gunshots, students and school staff were ordered to “secure in place,” authorities said.

On Monday night, university police sent out an alert warning the campus community to “run, hide, fight.”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer said she had called out President Biden about the shooting, which she called “a weekly American issue.”