One person is under arrested following a shooting during the Homecoming celebration at Tuskegee that killed one and injured sixteen others. Investigators say not all of the victims were hurt by gunfire. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency says Jaquez Myrick was arrested while leaving the scene of the shooting early Sunday. Hea was found with a handgun with a machine gun conversion device. The agency did not accuse him of using the gun in the shooting or provide additional details.
The shooting erupted as the historically Black university's 100th Homecoming Week was winding down. Authorities said an 18-year-old man who died was not a university student but that some of the injured were students. Tuskegee canceled classes Monday. It was not immediately known if Myrick had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Twelve people were wounded by gunfire, and four others sustained injuries not related to the gunshots, the state agency said. Several were being treated at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika and Baptist South Hospital in Montgomery, the university said in a statement. Their conditions were not immediately released.
The FBI joined the investigation and said it was seeking tips from the public, as well as any video witnesses might have. It set up a site online for people to upload video. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also was involved in the investigation, a local prosecutor said.
Tuskegee University canceled classes Monday and said grief counselors will be available in the university's chapel to help students. The parents of the victim were notified, and an autopsy was planned at the state's forensic center in Montgomery, Macon County Coroner Hal Bentley told The Associated Press. Tuskegee city's police chief, Patrick Mardis, said the injured included a female student who was shot in the stomach and a male student who was shot in the arm.
City police were responding to an unrelated double shooting off campus when officers got the call about the university shooting at the West Commons on-campus apartments, Mardis said.
"Some idiots started shooting," Mardis told the news site Al.com. "You couldn't get the emergency vehicles in there, there were so many people there."
A person who answered the phone at Mardis' office said no other information was available. In his 37 years as coroner, Bentley said he couldn't recall any shootings during the school's past homecoming celebrations. The mood around the small town of around 9,000 people was somber, he said. The shooting left everyone in the university community shaken, said Amare' Hardee, a senior from Tallahassee, Florida, who is president of the student government association.
Sunday's shooting comes just over a year after four people were injured in a shooting at a Tuskegee University student housing complex. Two visitors to the campus were shot and two students were hurt while trying to leave the scene of what campus officials described as an "unauthorized party" in September 2023, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.
About 3,000 students are enrolled at the university about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Alabama's capital city of Montgomery. The university was the first historically Black college to be designated a Registered National Landmark in 1966. It was also designated a National Historic Site in 1974, according to the school's website.
Norma Clayton, chairwoman of the board of the trustees, said at the Sunday morning service that "we will get through this together because in tough times, tough people band together and they survive."
