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UALR student shot on campus, evening classes canceled hours later Thursday, Feb 28, 2008 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - A University of Arkansas at Little Rock student was hospitalized Wednesday after being shot on a campus sidewalk, university officials said. UALR officials did not immediately cancel classes or close the sprawling campus, but later called off night classes. Authorities did not immediately release the name or condition of the male victim, who was reportedly taken to St. Vincent Infirmary. Hospital officials declined comment. Two suspects were still at large by early evening, officials said. Campus police said the shooting occurred about 2 p.m., near tennis courts across from the university's theater building. The student was shot in the torso, police said. Witnesses told officers he was shot twice. About 1,600 people on the 16,000-person campus were first notified of the shooting via a telephone alert system less than an hour later, and all students, staff and faculty were notified by e-mail at 2:53 p.m, according to UALR communications director Judy Williams. Alerts were also posted on UALR's Web site, which had been "inundated with hits," and on a marquee along bustling University Ave. on the campus' western edge, Williams said. The shooting occurred during a lull in campus activity, after most day classes had ended and before the start of night classes, university spokeswoman Joan Duffy said. After initially deciding to conduct classes as usual, UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson announced shortly before 5 p.m. that night classes were canceled, not because of a perceived danger on campus but out of respect to the victim and to quell the concerns of students and staff. "Our concerns today are for the young man and his family and for the safety and sense of security of all members of the UALR community," Anderson said in a prepared statement. UALR Police Chief Brad King said university police, working with the FBI, were confident the campus was safe. Two suspects in the shooting fled the campus in a gold car immediately after the shooting, he said. The shooting was the first on the UALR campus, Duffy said. She said the campus' alert system was tested last week. Using a database with the telephone number of every student living on campus and some numbers of faculty and staff, officials were able to call 1,600 members of the campus community and play an automated recording alerting them of the shooting, Duffy said. "It was kind of interesting because I was standing out talking to the media and I get my alert call," Williams said. "Other people around me, including our security, were getting that same phone alert at the same time, so we know that the telephone system works." Williams said the university would review its response to determine if the system could be improved. Officials would continue to collect telephone numbers to add to the alert system on a voluntary basis, she said. In April 2007, after Cho Seung-Hui shot and killed two people in a Virginia Tech dormitory in the morning and left the scene, classes on that campus went ahead as scheduled, and most students were unaware of the incident. Hours later, Cho entered a building where students were attending class and killed 30 more people before taking his own life. Virginia Tech officials were criticized for not canceling classes immediately after the first shootings. "They (Virginia Tech police) were not prepared. They did not think outside the box," Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings just weeks after the deadly shooting, during a forum on campus security at Pulaski Tech in North Little Rock. "Any time you have an incident that involves a school, you have to train the responding officers that it may be a continuing situation." Hastings said Wednesday he could not comment on the response to the shooting at UALR. He said Little Rock police were not investigating. "Sometimes closing down campus is not a good thing, depending on what's going on," he said. "I do not know the circumstances of the incident, so I'm not going to comment on any of that." ------- Reporter John Lyon contributed to this story. |
