Virginia State University briefly went into a lockdown Saturday night after a shooting on campus.
Chesterfield police officers described the shooting as an isolated incident and said the victim is expected to survive.
Virginia State police tweeted that there was a shooting on campus at 9 p.m. and instructed the campus community to avoid an area of the parking lot of VSU’s football stadium.
Officers responded to the incident in an area where tailgating had been taking place and found a man with a gunshot wound suffering from non-life threatening injuries. The man, who is not a VSU student, was taken to VCU Medical Center.
University police and officials from the Chesterfield Police Department quickly cleared the scene and the university Tweeted that the lockdown was lifted at 10:26 p.m. Officers remained “vigilant” Sunday morning, although police determined that there was no ongoing threat to the campus.
Police said an initial interview was conducted with the victim on the scene.
On Monday, police released a photo of a man dropping a gun on the VSU campus from university video surveillance footage (shown above). Officers were able to recover the gun and have sent it to the state lab for forensic testing, reports richmond.com.
Authorities are asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect as the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information can call Chesterfield police at (804) 748-1251 or Crime Solvers at (804) 748-0660.
Virginia State had been celebrating the final day of its homecoming on campus, and the shooting occurred after the school’s football game against Bowie State.
VSU President Makola M. Abdullah issued a statement on Sunday saying in part:
“The safety of our students and campus community is one of our primary priorities. Our campus lockdown procedures were initiated to ensure that we could best monitor the situation and lower the risk of additional incidents. All of our students are safe and the campus lockdown was lifted.
It was very unfortunate that an individual would use the occasion such as homecoming to display a senseless act of violence upon another individual. Virginia State University will continue to cooperate with Chesterfield Count Police in the investigation.”
