University On Lockdown After Reports Of Gunman

Central Connecticut State University in New Britain is on lockdown following reports of a gunman on campus. Little has been confirmed so far, but students reported seeing two students being escorted from a dorm by police around 2:35pm Monday, and a spokesman for the university said that the incident wasn’t a shooting.

Multiple students said the suspect was wearing camouflage clothing, knee pads, and paintball goggles and was roaming the halls with a samurai sword, an AK-47, and multiple clips of ammunition. A picture posted by Twitter user @SueSue009 showed police escorting a man in camouflage pants and his hands behind his back from a dorm; a student told NBC Connecticut suggested that the student may have donned a samurai sword for a Halloween costume days earlier.

NBC Connecticut reported earlier that the suspect has been “contained” in James Hall, and the mayor of New Britain the city says that nobody has been hurt. It’s unclear what exactly “contained” means, but the Harvard Courant reported earlier that the suspect was boxed in a single room, and that police were in communication with him.

Some students were seen leaving James Hall; however, school officials are still instructing students to stay inside and lock doors.

A student told NBC Connecticut that she and around a 100 other students were ushered into an upstairs faculty room by a professor after an alarm was triggered in the campus, where they stayed for around an hour before leaving. She expressed frustration that the reason behind the alarm wasn’t made clear, and said the school hadn’t previously held any such drills to prepare for campus emergencies.

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