(Trends Wide) — The shooter who killed three Michigan State University (MSU) students and critically wounded five others had a list of other targets, two handguns and plenty of ammunition when police found him shortly after the shooting. campus massacre, authorities revealed Thursday.
After gunshots terrorized the East Lansing campus Monday night, a citizen who closely followed the news coverage helped guide police to 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae, about 4 miles northwest of the campus, they said.
Apparently, “he was just walking home,” said MSU Acting Deputy Police Chief Chris Rozman.
When police approached him, McRae said nothing to officers before shooting himself, Michigan State Police Lt. Rene Gonzalez added.
Investigators found a large number of objects on her body and in her backpack, including:
- Two 9mm pistols purchased legally but not legally registered, Rozman said.
- A note with a list of potential targets. Two schools in New Jersey’s Ewing Township, about 600 miles from MSU, were among the potential targets, police have said.
- A “full magazine to the brim in the left breast pocket,” according to González.
- Eight clips of 9mm ammunition that were in his backpack, he said.
- A bag with about 50 loose 9mm ammunition cartridges in the backpack, according to González.
- Two bus tickets that authorities planned to follow up on with the local transportation agency, he said.
After securing the scene where McRae was found, police carried out a search warrant at his home.
There, they found a cell phone, newspapers, other writings and fired 9mm casings, authorities said.
Despite the latest clues, the motive for the mass shooting remains a mystery. “The note… indicated the place he was going to visit and also gave indications of… perhaps a reason, but nothing we can confirm yet,” González said Thursday.
Our campuses should not be battlefields
Thousands of people gathered this Wednesday night to pay tribute to the three students killed inexplicably: Arielle Anderson, 19; Brian Fraser, 20; and Alexandria Verner, also 20.
Authorities have not publicly identified the five students who were seriously injured.
“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told the crowd. “We shouldn’t have to unconsciously scan every room for an exit, go through the grim exercise of figuring out who our last call would be to.”
“Our campuses, churches, classrooms and communities should not be battlegrounds,” the governor told the grieving crowd, which included students who had also lived through another mass shooting at a Michigan high school just 15 months ago.
At a vigil on Wednesday, the MSU men’s basketball coach told students to let their emotions run as they processed the tragedy. “Whatever they feel, it’s all valid,” Tom Izzo said. “Emotions are different for each person.”
As the alma mater’s motto, “MSU Shadows,” echoed across campus, students wrapped their arms around each other and swayed together.
The Monday night attack on two campus buildings sent terrified students running, barricading themselves in classrooms or jumping out of windows as hundreds of officers converged on the university in search of the shooter, police said.
As parents plan their children’s funerals and others watch their own fight for their lives in the hospital, investigators search for answers.
Note left by the attacker talks about other targets
A makeshift monument on The Rock, a popular college landmark, grows on February 15, 2023, at Michigan State University. Credit: Jake May/The Flint Journal/AP
The two-page note found in McRae’s backpack begins: “Hello, my name is Anthony McRae” and continues: “I’m going to shoot MSU,” officials who had access to the note told Trends Wide.
The note, in which McRae claims to be the leader of a group of 20 assassins, also has a hit list that includes a warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store, a church, and a fast food restaurant, according to officials with access to the note told Trends Wide.
All businesses listed in the letter were advised that they had been named, but that the shooter was dead and there is no credibility to his claims to be the leader of any group, police officials said.
Authorities also previously disclosed that the note threatened further shootings at other schools hundreds of miles away in New Jersey. There, police said there was no longer a threat after McRae was found dead.
“We believe … that McRae was a lone shooter,” Gonzalez said Thursday.
While police investigate what connection the shooter may have had to the locations, FBI profilers are analyzing the letter, according to law enforcement officials. The memo does not say why the locations are targeted or list grievances, officials said.
It is also unclear how McRae, who previously pleaded guilty to a firearm charge, obtained the weapon used in the attack. Authorities stated that the type of firearm used remains under investigation.
The attacker should not have been able to legally buy a gun, according to the attorney general
McRae had previously been charged with carrying a concealed weapon, a felony that would have barred him from purchasing a gun if convicted.
At the federal level, a misdemeanor conviction does not prevent someone from buying a gun. But in Michigan, “under Michigan law, the charge can be either a felony or a misdemeanor,” the state attorney general’s office said.
However, the felony case against McRae never made it to trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, possession of a loaded firearm in or on a vehicle, in 2019 and spent a year and a half on probation, the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office said Tuesday.
McRae then bought two guns in 2021 in Michigan, a law enforcement source said. One was a Taurus pistol and the other a 9mm Hi-Point pistol, according to the source.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who has two children in college who was shocked by this week’s tragedy, told Trends Wide it was not yet clear whether the gun used in Monday night’s incident was purchased legally or No.
But when asked if the shooter should have been able to buy a gun, Nessel said: “I don’t think so.”
“We don’t even have universal background checks here in Michigan,” Nessel added. “We have very little legislation that prevents a person from owning a gun, having a gun, coming into contact with a gun.”
“Someone who has mental health issues, someone who just illegally possessed a gun, and look at how easy it was for them to get a gun even after all that, something has to change,” Nessel said.
The suspect’s father, Michael McRae, told Trends Wide his son became bitter, withdrawn and “wickedly angry” after his mother died of a stroke two years ago and “didn’t give a damn anymore.”
“Since my wife died, my son started to change,” said Michael McRae. “He was getting more and more bitter. Angry and bitter. Really angry. Badly angry… he started to get really carried away. His teeth were falling out. He stopped cutting his hair. He looked like a werewolf.”
We will never go back to normal
From left to right: Alexandria Verner, Arielle Anderson, and Brian Fraser.
Credit: Clawson Public Schools/Family Photo/Phi Delta Theta
At Wednesday’s vigil, speakers paid tribute to the three students killed in the shooting. They remembered their smiles, their kindness, their sense of humor and the dreams they had.
“This is our home and we’ve been through the unimaginable,” said Jo Kovach, MSU undergraduate student body president. “We have lost three beautiful souls that we attend classes with, are friends with, and are part of clubs with. Their absence on this campus and in this world will be felt forever.”
Anderson and Verner were juniors and Fraser was a sophomore, according to university police.
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Anderson was studying to be a doctor, his aunt Chandra Davis posted on Instagram. “How come she was in class doing what she was supposed to be doing and yet her life was taken by a coward who clearly didn’t understand the devastation he was about to wreak on my entire family?” he wrote. Davis. “No parent should have to bury their children.”
Fraser was president of the Michigan Beta chapter of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, the fraternity said in a statement. He was a leader and a great friend to his brothers, the Greek community and the people he associated with on campus, the fraternity said.
And Verner, a Clawson Public Schools graduate, was “everything you would want a student to be,” said school district superintendent Billy Shellenbarger.
The mass shooting also left five other students in critical condition. Although authorities have not identified them, student Guadalupe Huapilla-Pérez is among those injured, according to a verified account from GoFundMe and the National HEP/CAMP Association, in which Huapilla-Pérez participated at the school.
“The time away from work for her family, the long road to recovery ahead, and the consequent medical expenses to care for Guadalupe will place both an emotional and financial burden on her family,” the organization said on Facebook.
At the vigil, the student body president said the shooting has left a scar on the college community, but urged students to come together.
“We will never go back to normal. This event changed that feeling forever. But that’s okay,” Kovach said. “If there is something that I know and love about the Spartans, it is that in times of need we unite.”
Among those gathered for Wednesday’s vigil were officers from the MSU Police Department, who responded to Monday’s mass shooting.
Michigan State Police provided security at the vigil to allow university police to join the mourning, said the department, adding: “We are all healing together.”
— Trends Wide’s John Miller contributed to this report.
