Less than 10 minutes after the first 911 call was made, the suspect in the Feb. 13 attack at Michigan State University had left his second shooting location and was leaving campus, according to the university’s police department.
Michigan State University police included the detail in a timeline of events released Friday morning, just days before the one-month reminder of Michigan’s second mass shooting in 15 months. Police also released images of two pages of notes found in the suspect’s pocket after the shooting, along with details regarding the 911 calls received that night.
Three people — Brian Fraser, 20, of Grosse Pointe, Alexandria Verner, 20, of Clawson, and Arielle Anderson, 19, of Harper Woods — were killed in the attack, and five others were injured.
Police say the shooter was 43-year-old Anthony McRae, who killed himself when confronted by police hours later off-campus.
Here’s the timeline of events from the preliminary police investigation along with additional details obtained by the Free Press:
8:18 pm: 1st call reporting shots fired at Berkey Hall
Ingham County 911 received the first call to Berkey Hall, an academic building on the college’s East Lansing campus.
Marco Díaz-Muñoz, an assistant professor who was teaching at Berkey Hall, previously told the Free Press that the gunman came into his classroom, fired multiple shots, and then left. Multiple students in the class were injured, with Verner and Anderson fatally wounded, he said.
Díaz-Muñoz’s wife, Claudia Díaz, who was in a hallway, previously told the Free Press she called 911 while hiding.
Berkey Hall was open to the general public and unlocked from 8 am to 10:30 pm, when academic classes or activities took place, the police previously said. The building is closed for the rest of the semester.
Plus, the building does not have surveillance cameras, Dana Whyte, communications manager for MSU police, confirmed Thursday.
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The timeline released by the police did not state which door the gunman used to enter Berkey Hall. However, Díaz-Muñoz and his wife previously said the shooter used a classroom door closer to Grand River Avenue and did not enter through the building’s front door.
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8:20 pm: Officers entered Berkey Hall
8:24 pm: The suspect entered the Union
The suspect entered through a loading dock at the Union, said Whyte.
The door was unlocked — as it normally had been for delivery drivers during open building hours — and no one let him in, he told the Free Press on Thursday.
Prior to the shooting, the Union was open from 7 am to midnight. It’s also closed for the rest of the semester.
The door was shown in the surveillance images that were released by the police during their subsequent search for the shooter, he said.
8:26 pm: 1st report of shooting at the Union
8:26 pm: The suspects exited the Union and left campus
Details of the suspect’s movements after this point have not yet been released. McRae would be spotted and confronted nearly three hours later.
In the release Friday, police said McRae’s route after the shooting was still being reviewed and finalized by law enforcement.
8:27 pm: Officers arrived at the Union
8:30 pm: 1st emergency alert notification sent
8:31 pm: 2nd emergency alert notification sent
11:18 pm: Photo of suspect shared by police on social media
11:35 pm: 911 call of a person matching the suspect’s description walking on Lake Lansing Road near High Street in Lansing
11:49 pm: Officers approach McRae and he shoots himself
Police ended up stopping McRae nearly 4 miles away from campus, acting on a tip from the public, police have said.
The police ordered McRae to raise his hands, but McRae said nothing and shot himself instead, the police have said.
McRae had two 9-millimeter handguns, multiple magazines, 50 rounds of loose ammunition and the two pages of notes that were in his wallet.
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About the 911 calls
On the night of the shooting, MSU police received about 2,100 calls, with about 1,450 coming directly through 911. That’s about the typical number of calls the department receives over the course of five days; instead, the calls came within a five-hour period, the department stated in the news release.
Law enforcement acknowledged the onslaught of emergency calls and reports contributed to the confusion at MSU, ultimately delaying efforts to track down the shooter for several hours.
Police are reviewing the 911 calls. In a one-on-one interview with the Free Press, Interim Michigan State University Deputy Police Chief Chris Rozman said a number of calls may have been due to strange noises that night — like barricades being made by classmates — but the police are also looking into any possibility that bad actors were seeking to add to the chaos.
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The aftermath
The school announced plans to add locks and cameras to the campus in the wake of the mass shooting.
Police have previously said the university was upgrading its security camera monitoring system at the time of the shooting. It’s unclear where Berkey Hall’s lack of surveillance cameras fits into those upgrades.
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An inability to track the shooter live on security cameras, along with other factors, contributed to the delay in finding the suspect, the police previously said.
The investigation into the attack itself is ongoing.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State University shooting: Police timeline of events