Oakland University officials issued an all-clear Monday morning after the campus went into lockdown as police from several agencies searched for two suspects who reportedly were armed, and may have exchanged fire earlier with authorities.
Students were warned to “stay indoors” and commuters were told “not to come” that way.
No one was injured, but the incident was one of several Monday that highlight the dangers of gun violence.
The manhunt, campus police said, began in Grand Blanc as a car chase. Police pursued vehicles stolen from a dealership. There was gunfire, and one car crashed while heading south on Interstate 75. Two suspects — possibly armed — ran from the vehicle and were spotted near Adams Road and Walton Boulevard.
By noon, authorities allowed classes and other campus activities to resume, with Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard tweeting at about 9 a.m. that a witness saw two men matching the description of the suspects get into a vehicle that pulled up and left.
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Campus police posted alerts on various social media platforms at about 4 a.m., following national news reports that three people had been killed, and two wounded, at a shooting Sunday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and people there were ordered to take shelter.
In addition, Ferndale High and Middle schools — which are on the same campus — were closed Monday after a social media post threatened the day before to bring three loaded guns to the high school, according to WXYZ-TV (Channel 7). Later, the school district said Ferndale police arrested a suspect, but did not give more details.
Ferndale schools are expected to be open Tuesday with more police.
And on the west side of Michigan, a suspect was taken into custody after an hours-long standoff in which shots were exchanged between a 24-year-old man and police, according to WXMI-TV (Fox 17).
The various incidents appear unrelated, but the timing was unnerving.
More Americans, according to statistics from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, died of gun-related injuries in 2020, the latest year the data was available, than in any other year on record. The data includes gun-inflicted suicides.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [email protected]
