One person has been arrested in connection with a shooting at Tuskegee University that left one person dead and at least 16 injured on the Alabama school’s homecoming weekend.
Jaquez Myrick, 25, was arrested and charged with possession of a machine gun, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, or ALEA, said in a statement. Officials said Myrick had a handgun with a machine gun conversion device and was found leaving the scene of the shooting on the Tuskegee campus.
In a statement, ALEA said special agents were notified about multiple people shot on the university’s campus around 1:40 a.m., and that they’re still in the process of gathering information on the events that led to the shooting.
An 18-year-old was pronounced dead on the scene, the agency said. Tuskegee University said the victim was “a non-university individual.”
A total of 16 people were injured, including 12 who were shot and taken to local hospitals for treatment. “Four other individuals sustained injuries that were not related to gunfire over the course of the incident,” ALEA said.
Tuskegee University canceled all classes scheduled for Monday. Grief counselors will be available for students in the chapel on Monday.
ALEA is asking anyone with information to get in touch with the FBI, which is investigating the the incident.
One witness, Alyssa, who asked to be identified by only her first name, told NBC News she was visiting a friend at Tuskegee this weekend.
She said there was a big gathering, “almost like one big party,” in the parking lot of the west end campus, where she was staying.
She said though there were easily over 1,000 people there, everything was calm and people were dancing and mingling. Alyssa and her friend were walking around and recording TikTok near a truck playing music when she saw people running. Then she said she heard the first gunshots.
“I grabbed my friend immediately and that’s when I heard the shooting,” said Alyssa, 21, from Atlanta. She said she and her friend were pinned on the ground between two cars with a group of other people as the shooting occurred.
Video Alyssa posted to social media shows the group on the ground, hiding behind a vehicle. They tell each other to “get down” as rounds of gunfire ring out in the background.
“It was nearby, you could hear the bullets hitting glass and whistling past us,” Alyssa said. She said she heard people running by and yelling that they were going to pull their guns out and start shooting back, adding that there were multiple shooters.
“We were pinned down for a few minutes because they wouldn’t stop shooting,” she said. “It would be five second breaks and they started right back up.”
A nearly minute-long video posted to social media appears to show another witness sheltering behind a car as gunshots ring out almost continuously.
Matteo Moschella and Rebecca Cohen contributed.