February 14, 2023 - Michigan State University shooting leaves 3 dead, 5 injured

Our live coverage of the mass shooting at Michigan State University has ended. Follow the latest news here or read through the updates below. 

The suspect in the Michigan State University shooting previously pleaded guilty to a firearm charge, according to court records. 

Anthony Dwayne McRae was arrested in 2019 and charged with a felony for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for possession of a loaded firearm and spent a year and a half on probation. 

Around 2 a.m. ET on June 7, 2019, according to court records, a Lansing Police Department officer saw McRae sitting on the back steps of an abandoned building smoking a cigarette. The officer, who was patrolling the area after burglaries in the vicinity, asked McRae if he had any weapons, and McRae said that he did. 

The officer patted McRae down and confirmed that he had a loaded semi-automatic pistol in his pants pocket, as well as another magazine for the gun in his breast pocket. 

McRae admitted that he did not have a concealed pistol license and the officer arrested him. McRae told the officer he carried the gun for his safety and was trying to obtain a concealed permit for the weapon. According to court records, the officer confirmed the gun was registered to McRae. 

A lawyer for McRae initially argued that the officer lacked probable cause to search him.

In October 2019, McRae pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of a loaded firearm, according to a statement from John J. Dewane, Ingham County prosecutor.

The next month, McRae was sentenced to a year of probation, which was later extended to a year and a half. He agreed to forfeit the gun involved in the case and was banned from owning weapons during his probation, court records show. 

He was discharged from probation in May 2021 after completing all of the terms, Dewane's statement read.

McRae would not have been recommended for a jail or prison sentence even if he had been convicted by a jury for the original felony charge due to Michigan's sentencing guidelines, Dewane's statement read.

The FBI’s Detroit team will help Michigan State University students, faculty and staff recover personal items left behind after Monday night’s shooting, according to the Michigan State University Police.

FBI victim specialists and agents will help with the process, which will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, police said.

“Our hope is that this process will aid our community in retrieving personal property in a safe an orderly manner,” police said in a news release. “We are all in this together.”

It’s been less than 15 months since the Oxford, Michigan school shooting left four students dead and six others injured. It’s the shooting where Matt Riddle’s daughter, Emma, hid inside the band hall of Oxford High School behind a barricaded door. The students eventually fled to a store in the area, Riddle said.

Riddle recalls getting a call from his daughter that day, telling him she was running away. Months later on Monday night, he received a similar call from his daughter who was hiding in her dorm room at Michigan State University.

Emma, 18, told her dad she and her roommate shut the lights off, closed the window, barricaded the door and hid under their desks after they received a university alert Monday night. He told CNN his daughter was "shocked" as well as "very fearful and scared."

The two exchanged texts and phone calls over the course of three hours as police searched for the shooting suspect who's accused of taking the lives of three students and injuring five others. 

“It was hard because it was three hours from the initial event till it was resolved,” he said. “Not knowing what was happening and the danger was hard.”

As the situation began to resolve, Riddle, who lives about an hour and a half away in Oxford, drove to the campus to pick up Emma and her roommate. 

Emma, a freshman studying history at MSU, tweeted early Tuesday morning:

Her dad said she is home for now until classes start up again and is working through the trauma.

“She is OK, as OK as she can be,” he said. ”It was heartbreaking, as a parent, because she said ‘I have tools to work through this. I have been through this before so I know how to process this.'”

His advice for other parents is to just be there for their kids and let them know they aren’t alone. He added that being around other family members and support groups can also help process the trauma, but reminded parents that “there isn’t shame or guilt if you can’t be everything.”

A vigil for Brian Fraser, one of the students killed in a mass shooting at Michigan State University, was held Tuesday evening in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

Two other people were also killed in the shooting. Fraser, a native of Grosse Point, was a sophomore at the university.

During the vigil, St. Paul on the Lake Catholic Church was full of people from the community, with even some standing along the side walls.

Students and peers of Fraser’s could be seen embracing one another during the church service.

CNN’s Cara-Lynn Clarkson contributed to this post.

East Lansing Mayor Ron Bacon said the community is working on starting to rebuild after Monday night’s mass shooting on Michigan State University’s campus.

“It’s simply terrifying,” Bacon said. “I feel for our children and young people,”

The mayor called for legislative action, including making it harder for "dangerous individuals" to obtain weapons.

Tense, scary and chaotic was how Michigan State University student Joshua Thomas described his experience hunkering down in a classroom with dozens of students as a gunman went on a deadly shooting spree Monday night.  

Thomas was in the school's STEM building on the first floor when he and other students received an email from the university about an active shooter. 

"That's when everyone started to panic," Thomas said.

Thomas, and a group of about 15 other students, went up to the third floor, looking for a place to hide. He said someone stuck their head out of a classroom and signaled for them to come inside. 

"Right after we got in, they barricaded the room with the tables," he said. Thomas said there were around 75 students in the room.

After about four hours, the students heard a knock on the door and saw someone waving a flashlight. Students believed it could've been a police officer, but they were not sure, so one student called 911. On the phone, the dispatcher told them that officers were not on the third floor yet, so they kept the door shut.

In a video shot by Thomas, students are seen in a classroom with the lights turned off as someone shining a flashlight approaches the door and knocks. Someone inside the classroom is then seen walking over to the front door to remove a table that was being used as a barricade. 

"Sit down, I'm talking to the cops right now," a student can be heard saying in the video. "They said don't open the door," another student yells. 

Thomas said the person did not open the door and the students stayed in the classroom for another 40 minutes before the police arrived.

"I never thought it would happen to me, I always felt safe on campus. I love this place, but after this, my sense of security completely dropped. I do not feel safe," Thomas said.

The mass shooting and manhunt on the Michigan State University campus Monday night were a "double trauma," Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday.

"And everyone felt the effects. Over 50,000 students are here, so it's a traumatic thing that's going take a while to get over," said the Democrat, who represents East Lansing, home of the MSU campus.

Many students spent the night holed up in their rooms following the traumatic incident, she said.

"Now, we're starting to see a few folks come out and want to be together. They're planning vigils, taking action, planning protests. They're starting to come out," Slotkin said.

The broader Michigan community, many with connections to MSU, have offered an outpouring of support, Slotkin said.

Many Michiganders believe a person can be a gun owner, an avid hunter, "grow up with weapons the way I did – and still believe in keeping kids safe in a place of sanctuary like a school."

Slotkin added: "People on the ground know you can believe in gun ownership and gun safety, they’re not mutually exclusive."

Two of the Michigan State University victims went to high school in the same district, Jon Dean, superintendent of Grosse Pointe Public Schools, said at a press conference Tuesday.

Arielle Anderson and Brian Fraser graduated in 2021 from Grosse Pointe high schools, according to Dean. Anderson attended Grosse Pointe North and Fraser attended Grosse Pointe South.

“This event that has touched our nation, is now touching directly our community,” Dean said.

Both schools are offering mental health opportunities for all students, teachers and staff, according to Dean.

“How is it possible that this happened in the first place, an act of senseless violence that has no place in our society and in particular no place in school,” Dean said. “It touched our community not once, but twice."

Grosse Pointe is in Wayne County, about eight miles from Detroit.