SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) - A man suspected of shooting a fellow student at Savannah State University was caught Friday after a police dog sniffed him out hiding in the trunk of a car on campus, police said.
Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Judy Pal identified the suspect as 19-year-old Devon McIntosh, who was taken into custody about five hours after the late-morning shooting.
Campus Police Chief Thomas Trawick said the wounded student knew the suspect.
"It was not a random shooting," Trawick said at a news conference. "This was individuals who knew each other, and there was an altercation."
The victim, whose name was not released, was shot once in the arm and once in the abdomen, Trawick said. University spokeswoman Loretta Heyward said he was out of surgery, but she did not know his condition.
Trawick said that after the shooting, a SWAT team surrounded a building in University Commons where McIntosh lives. Authorities had evacuated the building after the shooting at 11:45 a.m. and officers had recovered the handgun used, he said.
Dr. Tara Cox, a university marine biologist, said students and faculty were alerted about the shooting through an automated messaging system.
"We just locked the doors and kept the students that were in the building in the building," she said.
Colleges across the country implemented text message and e-mail warning systems after a gunman killed 32 people before shooting himself last year at Virginia Tech. Savannah State's Web site allows students to sign up for the emergency notices.
The campus of about 3,400 students along Georgia's coast was locked down after the shooting but reopened after McIntosh was in custody. The school that was founded in 1890 is the state's oldest public historically black college.
Junior Charvaris Dewberry, 20, said he was in his dorm room when a friend called about the shooting. He said he tuned in to television news coverage because the university was providing scant information.
Dewberry said he and most of his friends are not enrolled in the emergency alert program.
Associated Press Writers Greg Bluestein, Dorie Turner and Walter Putnam in Atlanta contributed to this report. |