'Our Spartan hearts are broken': Police seek motive for Michigan State University shooting; 3 students killed are ID'd. Updates.

EAST LANSING, Mich. – A clearer picture began to emerge Tuesday about the 43-year-old shooter with a previous gun violation who killed three Michigan State University students late Monday and critically wounded five others, but police were still searching for a motive.

Authorities said Anthony Dwayne McRae had once been on probation for the gun offense and had a history of mental health struggles. He shot and killed himself after a manhunt that ended in a confrontation with police miles from campus, authorities said Tuesday.

University police identified the three dead students as sophomores Arielle Anderson and Brian Fraser and junior Alexandria Verner. All three hailed from the Detroit metropolitan area.

“It's a family's worst nightmare and it’s happening far too often in this country,” President Joe Biden said in Washington. “We have to do something to stop the gun violence that’s ripping apart our communities.''

Biden also released a statement calling for Congress to pass specific measures to tighten gun laws nationwide, noting that Tuesday marks the fifth anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The president spoke by phone with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, an MSU graduate who said at a morning briefing, “Our Spartan community is reeling today.”

Investigators were still looking into why McRae fired inside the Berkey Hall academic building and the student union shortly before 8:30 p.m. Monday, leading to a campus lockdown and a three-hour search for the killer. 

“We have absolutely no idea what the motive was,” said Chris Rozman, deputy chief of campus police, adding that McRae, of Lansing, was not a student or a Michigan State employee.

Developments:

►The five wounded students remained in critical condition Tuesday, a Sparrow Hospital official said. 

►Rozman said two people were killed and several wounded at Berkey Hall and another was killed at the student union before the gunman apparently fled.

►Several prayer services and vigils are scheduled to honor the victims, including one at Grosse Pointe Memorial Church in the Detroit suburb that was home to two of the students killed in the shooting.

►The university canceled classes, sports and other activities for at least 48 hours, a time for those affected to collect their thoughts and grieve, interim President Teresa Woodruff said. "Our Spartan hearts are broken,'' she said.

MASS KILLING DATABASE:Revealing trends, details and anguish of every US event since 2006

How the events unfolded

Rozman said at a briefing Tuesday that authorities received multiple calls of a shooting at Berkey Hall at around 8:18 p.m. Monday.

"There was an absolutely overwhelming police response to that call," he said, and officers arrived within minutes. 

Minutes later, calls came in reporting a second shooting scene at the student union building nearby, he said, sending officers scrambling there.

Rozman said police "had no idea'' about McRae's whereabouts for nearly the first three hours of the manhunt before his image, captured on school security cameras, was sent to news media around 11:15 p.m. Soon after, an “alert citizen” spotted him in the Lansing area and notified police, Rozman said.

They found McRae in an industrial area about 5  miles from campus, and he shot himself in the confrontation, Rozman said. Four hours after the first shots were reported, police announced the man’s death.

“This is still fluid,” Rozman said. “There are still crime scenes that are being processed, and we still are in the process of putting together the pieces to try to understand what happened.”

Plea bargain to gun charge in 2019 allowed shooter to buy weapons

McRae pleaded guilty in 2019 to a weapons-related charge in Lansing, according to court and Michigan Department of Corrections records, and relatives and neighbors told the Detroit Free Press he fired a gun dangerously in his backyard.

McRae was originally charged with a felony, and a conviction would have prevented him from legally owning a gun in the future. But McRae agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, a charge that did not bar his ability to buy a firearm after he successfully completed probation.

Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, said a Lansing police officer had spotted McRae near an abandoned building at about 1:30 a.m. one night. The officer questioned McRae, who admitted he had a gun and did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, Gautz said.

The officer found a Ruger LCP .380 semi-automatic pistol in McRae's pants pocket, according to court records. He was charged with a violation of concealed-carry law and possessing a loaded weapon in a vehicle; he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor weapon-in-a-vehicle charge and the other was dropped, according to court records. Gautz said McRae was placed on probation in late 2019 and was “successfully discharged” on May 14, 2021. 

– Dave Boucher, Detroit Free Press

McRae's brother 'still trying to process this whole thing'

McRae’s older brother, Michael McRae Jr., 45, said he doesn’t “have a clue” what prompted Anthony McRae’s shooting spree on campus. His brother “stayed to himself” and they had grown apart over the years, he said. Michael McRae lives in Delaware. The brothers grew up in New Jersey. Anthony McRae and his parents moved to Michigan about 20 years ago after his father was transferred from New Jersey by General Motors.

“This just don’t seem real, that he would be able to do anything like this,” the older brother told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Tuesday. “I am still trying to process this whole thing.”

The last time the brothers spoke was at their mother’s funeral two years ago. Anthony McRae had no children, no spouse and no friends his older brother knew of. Michael McRae said his younger brother worked at warehouse jobs in Lansing.

“He kind of secluded himself," said Michael McRae, who learned what happened from their father Tuesday morning. 

“I am deeply sorry for this whole thing,” McRae said.

The suspected gunman shared a house in Lansing with his father, also named Michael McRae, who told CNN his son was a ''mama's boy'' who spiraled after his mother died in 2020.

"Ever since my wife died, my son began to change,'' the elder McRae said in a phone interview with the network. "He was getting more and more bitter, angry and bitter. So angry, evil angry. ... He began to really let himself go. His teeth were falling out. He stopped cutting his hair. He looked like a wolfman.''

– Christine MacDonald and Dave Boucher, Detroit Free Press

College mass shooters typically have ties to campuses

Nearly all of the mass shooters at places of higher education in recent history have had a relationship with the campus, according to The Violence Project, a nonprofit research center. There have been nine mass shootings that killed four or more people in or around college or university settings since 1966, and in eight of them the gunmen were current or former students or employees, co-founder James Densley said.

The shooters were all men, with an average age of 28 – the youngest was 22 and the oldest was 43 – and three were white, he said. Like the Michigan State shooter, five of the nine died by suicide. 

– Grace Hauck, USA TODAY

Students sheltered in place or hid where they could

Ben Finkelstein, a senior, said he was sheltering in place in his room.

"I don't think I've ever been this scared," he said. "I've been listening to the police scanner for an hour."

Finkelstein said he was hiding under a pile of dirty laundry in his first-floor room. He closed all of his blinds and turned off his lights.

"It's far too late for this to be called a wake-up call," he said. "The sad truth is I doubt we're going to be the last. Other than that, I'm praying for everybody."

Kayal Ghassan, a 19-year-old fisheries and wildlife student, was eating in another building on campus when word of the shooting spread, he said. He noticed other students began crowding at the doors.

Students were worried and panicking, he said. Many were calling their families. “Everyone was running in fear," he said. "I saw people climbing over other people.”

Ghassan and others ran to a nearby parking lot, where police immediately asked if they saw the suspect and knew what he looked like.

“I was fearing for my life, honestly. I’ve never experienced something like this,” he said.

Gunman had note indicating possible threat to schools in New Jersey

Police in Ewing Township, New Jersey, said information received during the investigation indicated the MSU shooter had local ties to the township. When McRae was found by police in Michigan, he had a note in his pocket that "indicated a threat to two Ewing Public Schools," Ewing police said in a Facebook post. An investigation revealed that McRae had a history of mental health problems, police said.

Ewing Public Schools were closed for the day as a precaution. Officers from Ewing and surrounding agencies were stationed at all schools and in the township.

Five wounded students remained in critical condition Tuesday

Dr. Denny Martin, chief medical officer at Sparrow Hospital, choked back tears as he described the effort to save the lives of the five wounded students rushed to his building. He said that four of the five needed immediate surgery and that all five remained in critical condition Tuesday.

He lauded physicians and staff at the hospital for dealing with the mass casualties.

"We practice this very often but hope we never have to do it," he said. "It was a sad but very proud night for all of us here."

Who was the shooter?

Rozman said McRae was located at about 11:35 Monday night in Lansing by officers about 5 miles away in an industrial area. McRae killed himself and a firearm was recovered at the scene, Rozman said. McRae was not a student or employee of the school and no connection to the school was immediately determined.

McRae was on probation for 18 months until May 2021 for possessing a loaded, concealed gun without a permit, according to the state Corrections Department.

Rozman said authorities reviewed security camera footage after the shooting, found frames that included the shooter and released his photo. Officers following up on a tip called in "from an alert citizen" found the killer, he said.

"We want to sincerely thank our community for their help," campus police said in a Twitter post. "Because of the quick release of the suspect photos through our campus security cameras, a caller’s tip was able to lead officers to the suspect."

Student near shooting had lost friends in high school rampage

The mother of a freshman Michigan State student says her daughter was traumatized by gun violence at school for the second time in less than two years. Jennifer Mancini told the Detroit Free Press her daughter was at Oxford High School north of Detroit in November 2021 when a fellow student opened fire at the school, killing four people. Mancini said two of the victims were close friends of her daughter. 

Mancini, who asked that her daughter's name not be used, said her daughter was across the street from the student union Monday when gunfire erupted. Her daughter saw people running out of the building and called her mother.

"She said, 'Mom, I hear gunshots … What's going on?' " Mancini said. "She said, 'Get me out of here.'"

Her daughter's father went to get her after the lockdown ended. Read more here.

– Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press

3 KILLED AT MICHIGAN STATE:Suspect dead after hourslong search

‘It's the same cycle over and over again,’ says Parkland survivor

Exactly five years since a gunman fatally shot 17 people and wounded 17 others at his high school in Parkland, Florida, David Hogg awoke Tuesday to news of another mass shooting, this time at Michigan State University.

“It's just that it's really disheartening and frustrating when this stuff continues to happen. It's the same cycle over and over again,” said Hogg, 22, now a senior at Harvard University studying history and political science.

Hogg noted students at Michigan State who were affected by the shooting included survivors of the mass shootings at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan, in 2021, and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, in 2012.

“It’s awful,” he said. “It's becoming increasingly common that kids don't just go through a school shooting but that they go through multiple.”

At the same time, Hogg said he hasn’t lost hope. He’s focused on building consensus around gun violence prevention.

“We need to have a dialogue, not a debate. That's the bottom line here,” Hogg said. “Debate is getting us nowhere. We need to focus on what we can agree on.”

-- Grace Hauck

MSU moves to emergency operations

Interim MSU President Teresa Woodruff said Tuesday that the school has moved to emergency operations for two days to allow students, staff and faculty "to think, grieve and be together" after a "day of shock and heartbreak."

The school has 50,000 students, almost 20,000 of whom live on campus. A Family Assistance Center was set up for families to pick up their on-campus students. Counselors were available for staff and students.

"We are devastated at the loss of life,'' Woodruff said. "Our campus grieves, we will all grieve. We will change over time. We cannot allow this to continue to happen again."

Bacon reported from Arlington, Va. Contributing: Paul Egan, Andrea Sahouri, Mike Ellis, Emily Lawler, Mark Johnson and Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY NETWORK; The Associated Press