Three students were killed and five others were critically injured in a mass shooting at Michigan State University.

The suspected killer was identified by police as a 43-year-old man with no connection to the 50,000-student university, who apparently opened fire at two campus locations before shooting himself as police closed in.

The shooting late on Monday at the public campus in East Lansing came one day before the fifth anniversary of one of the nation’s most traumatic mass killings – the fatal shooting of 17 people at a high school in Florida – and was met with the well-practised American routine of expressions of surprise and vows of community resilience.

“We cannot allow this to continue to happen again,” MSU’s interim president, Teresa Woodruff, told a briefing.

̽����Ƶ

“Let’s wrap our arms around the Spartan community tonight,” the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, said in a , using MSU’s sports team nickname.

“It’s a family’s worst nightmare,” President Joe Biden told a meeting of the National Association of Counties. “And it’s happening far too often in this country. Far too often.”

̽����Ƶ

The university . The break will give students, faculty and staff time to “think, grieve and be together”, Dr Woodruff said.

Victims were found at two locations on the campus, located about an hour west of Detroit – the university’s Student Union building and Berkey Hall, which houses the College of Social Science, the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and the department of sociology.

Both buildings are accessible to the general public, without requiring a key card admission system, officials said.

Some students at nearby locations were reported to have been breaking out windows of ground-level floors to escape the sounds of gunfire.

̽����Ƶ

The three students killed were identified as juniors Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner and sophomore Brian Fraser. Another five victims were listed in critical condition at MSU-affiliated Sparrow Hospital, .

MSU students who survived the attack included some who attended Oxford High School, about 40 miles northeast of MSU, in 2021 when a 15-year-old student used a handgun to fatally shoot four other students.

Police identified the deceased suspect in the MSU killings as Anthony Dwayne McRae, who was described in published reports as a frequent gun user with extensive personal struggles who had been seeking a concealed weapons permit when he was arrested in Lansing in 2019 for illegally carrying a gun in public.

The killings come as some public universities in several parts of the US are facing new attempts by conservative state lawmakers to allow guns on campuses. Michigan law lets each institution set its own campus firearm limits. MSU forbids its own students, faculty and staff from bringing guns on to campus, but it does allow on-campus gun possession by visitors with a concealed weapons permit.

̽����Ƶ

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com