Today Phu-Qui Cong “Bill” Cong Nguyen was taken to custody after he made a threatening call to commit suicide and possibly harm students on campus. According to the Mississippi State University president, Mark Keenum, Nguyen had placed the call at 10:10 a.m. and the student was apprehended and taken into custody around 10:26 a.m.
No shots were fired, and no injuries were sustained during the event, but officials on campus are still continuing to sweep the area; once Nguyen was apprehended, no gun was recovered. When asked, Sid Salter (an MSU spokesman), why the situation was immediately called an active shooter situation even though no gun was recovered, Salter stated that the University did not want to wait for evidence for a gun and would rather issue an alert to keep their students safe.
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I spoke to Mississippi State University student Natalia Cardin about the situation on her campus. Upon receiving the "Maroon Alert" (the alert system used within MSU via text and email), she said, "Inside the buildings the teachers locked down the doors and turned off the lights. Students were told to stay under the desk. Many of my friends said they jumped out of the windows that were on the first floor of the building." Cardin also stated that the University would be holding support groups for students either tonight or tomorrow to attend.
Another student, Hannah Riggs, was in the building next to the shooting suspect. "My professor had just finished his lecture and right as we were leaving, everybody got the alert on their phone," she recalled, "So the teacher told us we were obviously more than welcome to stay there until everything was over. There was about 60 or so people in the class all on the phone with friends and family and on Twitter trying to figure out what was really going on."
Riggs said that while waiting for her boyfriend to come and pick her up, she went to a bathroom, locked the door and heard people screaming followed by the locking of other doors. "Then it was really quiet and I heard footsteps down the hallway," she said. "In retrospect that was probably a police officer or something. But at the time that was when people were saying there was a second shooter, so I was obviously just terrified." Riggs also mentioned that she was very impressed with the Starkville Police and how they handled the whole situation.
Both students sent a copy of the alerts they received on their phones on the active shooting situation:
At this time, MSU has issued an "all clear" for the campus and classes were to resume at 2:00 p.m. today.
