The University of North Carolina (UCN) experienced a nightmare this Monday. An armed subject has caused hours of terror in the center of Chapel Hill, a town northwest of the capital Raleigh. On the sixth day of class, a faculty member was killed with a gun. The event resulted in hundreds of students barricading themselves in classrooms for hours after hearing the gunshots at the university, one of the most important in the US South. After the blasts, authorities began a full-scale search for the suspect, a physics graduate student, who was arrested after nearly two hours of panic and confusion.
At 1:04 p.m. ET, UNC sent its students an alert that an “armed and dangerous” person was “on or near” the university campus, which is home to about 29,000 students. The message urged students, teachers and staff to take refuge in classrooms, dormitories, libraries and offices. Minutes later, local television announced that the suspect had been seen on the premises of the education center and shots had been heard. “Possible active shooter,” was heard on the local police radio. Together with other security forces, such as the state police, he accompanied the operation, which lasted more than three hours.
Panic has brought moments of terror. A video on social media showed two students jumping out of the building’s window to flee the campus. Others left the classrooms with their backpacks on their backs and their arms raised so as not to pose a threat to the many agents. It was minutes of chaos as authorities did not know the suspect’s description. A teacher described to a Raleigh television station how young people were knocking on his classroom doors, seeking refuge from a possible massacre. The teacher confessed he didn’t know how to respond as the university’s security team had asked them not to open anyone or answer calls from outside the classrooms.
When police first arrived at the site, the physics and chemistry labs, they found a faculty member dead on the ground. “It was the only fatality and there were no other injuries,” said Brian James, the university’s police chief, this Monday afternoon. Authorities have not released the identity of the deceased and said in a press conference that the investigation will take “several weeks” to determine the motive for the murder.
Witnesses to the incident identified the suspected gunman as Tailei Qi, a foreign student from China who was a second-year doctorate in physics at the university. Minutes later, police arrested a young Asian man with similar characteristics near the labs. They released him minutes later when they realized he wasn’t the one they were looking for. The university remained closed during the tense period of the sixth day of classes while dozens of police officers searched the area for another shooter or other casualties.
Identifying the person sparked a major operation to apprehend Qi, who fled the scene. Police arrested him around 2:30 p.m. in a residential area three kilometers from the university. He offered no resistance to the numerous elements that captured him. A photo from the local press shows him sitting on the street with his hands tied behind his back and his eyes on the ground. James, the police chief, has indicated that the gun used was not found or whether it was legally purchased. He has also refused to officially identify Qi as he awaits local prosecutors to file charges against the student.
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A project partner of Qi told WRAL that he was “more than surprised” to learn the student was the alleged killer. “He was always very calm (…) and in his treatment he was beyond kind, I never imagined that he was the type of person who would dare something like that,” said Aiden Carter. Qi graduated from Wuhan University and describes himself on his LinkedIn page as a fan of sports like badminton and track and field. Taking to social media, he expressed his frustration at the lonely life he leads in the United States. In a message from more than a year ago, he claimed to have been the victim of bullying. However, police have not confirmed this and say they are waiting to question the suspect to clarify his links to the victim.
The warning was lifted after three hours. Then dozens of students left the classrooms, some in tears. The parents of many came to the university to comfort the students. “This generation lives with the threat of a mass shooting every day. Half of the teenagers think there will be a shooting every week. has insured in X, formerly Twitter, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a gun control activist. The university canceled classes for the rest of the day and Tuesday.
The incident came just two days after a white man murdered three people at a supermarket in Jacksonville, Florida. The killer, a racist with Nazi sympathies, intended to attack a majority-black university. After campus security turned him away by refusing to provide identification, the man went into a store, where he opened fire with a high-powered rifle.
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