Tuskegee University Homecoming Week shooting leaves 1 dead, 16 injured
A Homecoming Week shooting at Tuskegee University in Alabama left one person dead and 16 others injured, 12 of them by gunfire, school officials said.
The shooting occurred on campus and happened as the historically Black university's 100th Homecoming Week was winding down. The victim of the shooting, an 18-year-old male, was not a university student, but some of those who were injured were.
Twelve people were wounded by gunfire, and four others sustained injuries not related to the gunshots, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said in a Sunday afternoon update.
An autopsy on the person killed was planned at the state's forensic center in Montgomery, Macon County Coroner Hal Bentley told The Associated Press on Sunday. The city's police chief, Patrick Mardis, said the injured included a female student who was shot in the stomach and a male student who was shot in the arm.
City police were responding to an unrelated double shooting off campus when officers got the call about the university shooting at the West Commons on-campus apartments, Mardis said.
"Some idiots started shooting," Mardis told the news site Al.com. "You couldn't get the emergency vehicles in there, there were so many people there."
About 3,000 students are enrolled at the university about 40 miles east of Alabama's capital city of Montgomery.
The university was the first historically Black college to be designated as a Registered National Landmark in 1966. It was also designated a National Historic Site in 1974, according to the school's website.
Norma Clayton, chairwoman of the board of the trustees, said at the Sunday morning service that "we will get through this together because in tough times, tough people band together and they survive."
