EAST LANSING, Mich. – Officials provided a comprehensive update on the Michigan State mass shooting investigation on Thursday morning, discussing the condition of injured students, the weapons and note found on the shooter, what happened at the scene where he killed himself, the search at his house, and much more.
What we already knew about shootings
Police first received 911 calls at 8:18 p.m. Monday (Feb. 13) about a shooting at Berkey Hall on the north edge of the Michigan State University campus.
Interim Deputy MSU Police Chief Chris Rozman said when officers arrived they found several students with gunshot injuries. Two students were pronounced dead from the shooting at Berkey Hall.
While authorities were at the scene of the first shooting, they received reports of shots being fired nearby at the MSU Student Union. A third student was killed in that shooting.
In total, five injured students were taken to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing.
Hundreds of local, county, state, and federal authorities responded to the campus. They investigated several false reports of shootings while also searching for the shooter.
Around 11:35 p.m. Monday, police received a call that the shooter, later identified as 43-year-old Anthony McRae, had been spotted off campus in Lansing. When officers arrived, McRae fatally shot himself, they said.
3 students killed
Several vigils have been held and are planned for the three Michigan State students who were killed in the shootings.
They have been identified as Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser, and Alexandria Verner.
Anderson, 19, was a 2021 graduate of Grosse Pointe North High School. She was a sophomore at Michigan State.
Fraser, 20, of Grosse Pointe, was a 2021 graduate of Grosse Pointe South High School. He was also a sophomore at Michigan State.
Verner, 20, of Clawson, was a 2020 graduate of Clawson High School. She was a junior at Michigan State.
Update on injured students
Police began Thursday’s briefing by saying that all five injured students were still in critical condition at the hospital, however, around 11:10 a.m., one of the students was upgraded to stable.
The other four students remain in critical condition.
“I’m pleased that we are seeing some signs of improvement in some of our students,” interim MSU President Teresa Woodruff said.
Officials said they will not confirm the identities of the injured students out of respect for their privacy.
Police contact with shooter
Rozman said that while MSU Police are the lead investigating agency, the case is so complex that certain parts of it are being handled by other departments in a “unified and coordinated” effort.
Michigan State Police Lt. Rene Gonzalez spoke Thursday about what happened at the scene where McRae died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Gonzalez said detectives received a tip that someone matching the shooter’s description was walking down the street in the area of Lake Lansing Road and Larch Street, which is in Lansing.
That call came from someone who saw McRae’s picture in the media, about 17 minutes after surveillance photos were released by police, according to Rozman.
“Two LPD officers made contact with the shooter approximately 20 feet from McRae,” Gonzalez said. “They exited their vehicle, ordered him to show his hands, however, he produced a weapon, and then killed himself.”
Body camera video shows McRae didn’t say anything to officers before shooting himself, according to authorities.
Two Michigan Capitol security officers arrived at the scene and approached McRae with the Lansing Police Department officers. He was lying along the street, they said.
Gonzalez said authorities cleared the scene and tried to provide life-saving treatment to McRae, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Two Michigan State Police troopers and two Lansing Township police officers also arrived at the scene, Gonzalez said.
MSP believes shooter was heading home
Authorities performed a surveillance canvas to try to track the shooter’s path from the time he left the MSU Student Union to when he killed himself about 3.8 miles northwest of campus.
“It looked like, from looking at the video that we did have portions of, that he was just walking home,” Gonzalez said. “His ending spot was just around the corner from his house on Howe Street. So it appears he was just heading home.”
Gonzalez said there were two bus tickets in McRae’s possession, but it’s not clear if he actually used any form of transportation.
“It appeared to us that he was heading home when someone just spotted him from the pictures we put out on him,” Gonzalez said.
Weapons, ammunition found
Rozman confirmed that two 9 mm handguns were found in the shooter’s possession. He also had additional magazines and ammunition.
Gonzalez said one of the handguns was used by McRae to shoot himself, and the other was inside a backpack he was carrying. A fully loaded magazine was in his left breast pocket.
Police said they found eight loaded 9 mm magazines in the backpack, along with a pencil-sized pouch containing 50 rounds of loose 9 mm ammunition.
There were two empty magazines in the shooter’s possession, Gonzalez said.
Officials with the a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives traced the two handguns and determined that they had been purchased legally by McRae, but they were not registered.
Search of shooter’s home
After the shooter’s death, officers from the MSU and Lansing police departments searched his house in Lansing, Gonzalez said.
“At the residence, a cellphone was collected, journals of sorts, miscellaneous writings, and fired 9 mm casings,” Gonzalez said. “McRae’s father was also interviewed on scene by the MSP detectives at the Lansing Operations Building.”
Shooter’s note and the search for a motive
Two pages of notes were found in the shooter’s wallet, police confirmed Thursday.
“That was the note that indicated where he was going to visit, and also kind of gave an indication of why, maybe a motive, but nothing that we can actually confirm just yet,” Gonzalez said.
The note threatened businesses, a church, and a school district in New Jersey.
“We found that he had had contact with some of those places,” Gonzalez said. “He was an employee of the Meijer warehouse at one time. A couple of the other businesses, it appears that he had some issues with the employees there, where he was asked to leave. So it looks like he -- possibly a motive for that was he just felt slighted, and that’s kind of what the note indicated.”
Gonzalez said McRae had connections to the New Jersey area in the past, but it was many years ago. Police are still trying to figure out how that fits into the investigation.
In the note, McRae claimed to be the leader of a group of 20 killers. Michigan State Police troopers said they debunked that claim while talking to the shooter’s father.
“Through interviews with the shooter’s father, we brought that up to him, and he had mentioned that his son does not have any friends,” Gonzalez said. “He pretty much sat in his room most of the time. He ate, went to the bathroom in there. So he pretty much never left his room, and his father didn’t believe that he had any friends, let alone 20 of them that would help him put this out. So we kind of determined that he was the lone shooter in this.”
Officials reiterated that they don’t believe any other people are involved. They don’t believe there is any remaining danger to the public linked to McRae’s actions.
Police continue to investigate the motive behind the shootings.
“It appears, based on the content of the note, that he felt that he was slighted in some way by people or businesses,” Rozman said. “Did a mental health issue amplify that, or was it a component of that? We’re not sure at this point. I just want to assure everybody that that’s the question on all of our minds, and we’re working our best to try to determine that as best as possible.”
Rozman said police are aware of and investigating a claim that McRae had been turned down for a job at MSU. He was not a current or former student, teacher, or staff member at the university.
Criminal history
Lansing police Chief Ellery Sosebee said his department has never responded to any welfare checks or reports of shootings involving McRae at the house where he lived.
Police performed a welfare check at the address on Feb. 5, but it was not related to McRae, according to authorities.
McRae’s first link to law enforcement in Michigan came in 2005, when he was contacted by Lansing officers in connection with a larceny complaint.
He had a traffic violation in 2006, and two more in 2007, authorities said.
In 2019, McRae was arrested by the Lansing Police Department for carrying a concealed weapon. The weapon involved in that case is still in the department’s custody, Sosebee said.
McRae’s charge in that 2019 case was pled down by the then-Ingham County prosecutor. A motion was made by McRae’s defense, and the prosecutor agreed to negotiate down to a lesser charge that resulted in no jail time and no felony charge that prohibited McRae from buying weapons, according to Sosebee.
He was sentenced to a year of probation. The prosecutor from that case is no longer with Ingham County.
“We would all hope that a prosecutor would uphold the law as it’s written,” Sosebee said. “There’s always room for some type of discrepancy or discretion, however, that one will be scrutinized for a long time, I’m sure.”
How did the shooter get so far away from campus?
Rozman answered several questions about how the shooter managed to get nearly four miles away from campus despite the large police presence.
“The chaos that ensued and the information that we were receiving -- due to the number of reports that we were receiving on campus, we actually, at the time, thought that he was still on campus,” Rozman said. “We had no indication at the time that he left campus. We were receiving and responding to so many calls about potential shots fired or sightings of this person on campus.”
Rozman said officials started at the MSU campus and then branched out from there once many of the buildings had been secured.
“We had no indication at the time to believe that he was off campus, and especially that far off campus -- two, three, four miles,” Rozman said. “As resources responded, we started deploying them out further, and when that call did come in, due to that decision, we had resources that were able quickly to respond to that location.”
Police confirmed they responded to a number of false shooting reports that came across the scanner.
“When the additional calls came in that there were additional shooting scenes on campus, we thought those were real, initially,” Rozman said. “We responded like they were real. We reacted like they were real.”
Tactical teams were sent to those locations and buildings, and officers entered those facilities ready to hunt down a shooter.
“It took us awhile to determine that some of those were false, were hoax, calls,” Rozman said.
False report of shooting at IM East
One of the false shooting reports suggested that shots had been fired at the IM East Sports and Recreation building.
MSU Police Chief Marlon Lynch, the vice president for public safety, confirmed that the IM East shooting was investigated.
“Those officers get there, they get to IM East, no signs of shooting, not hearing anything, that’s the response,” Lynch said.
Classes canceled through Sunday
Woodruff said classes at Michigan State have been canceled through Sunday.
Meanwhile, the university is now resuming “standard operations,” which means university offices are open. Supervisors are being given latitude across the network, though.
In response to a petition that already has thousands of student signatures, Woodruff said there are ongoing discussions about the possibility of allowing students to attend class online this semester, but no decision has been made.
Buildings shut down
Berkey Hall is closed for the rest of the semester, and the MSU Student Union is still being evaluated at this time.
Woodruff said a leadership group is meeting to decide what to do with the two buildings going forward.
“We’ve also been talking with our students, faculty, and staff who were in the class of the shooter in Berkey Hall, and the employees who were in the Union on Monday night,” Woodruff said.
How students can pick up items left at Berkey Hall
Jim Tarasca, the FBI special agent in charge of the Detroit Field Office, said officials are meeting with students and staff members to return the items that were left behind at Berkey Hall.
Students can show up to the building to get their items back and meet with FBI victim specialists for mental health support.
“The property that we’ll return to (students), essentially, it’s a pretty easy process,” Tarasca said. “They’ll identify what’s theirs, we’ll return it.”
Students who don’t want to go to Berkey Hall don’t have to do so to retrieve their belongings.
“For those students who don’t want to be there, don’t want to be in that building, that’s fine,” Tarasca said. “Just understand: You don’t have to do that. We will get your property to you. You can come, not go in the building, talk to our folks, and they’ll get it to you. Or, after today, everything that’s leftover -- everything that remains that hasn’t been collected -- will be turned over to the MSU Police Department so they can coordinate and facilitate getting those items back to you.”
He thinks about 80% of the items have already been returned. As of Thursday morning, there were 18 students who hadn’t yet picked up their possessions. Those items are available to be picked up Thursday, or students can reach out to MSU Police to get their belongings if they don’t want to go to Berkey Hall.
Student, officer heroics
Lynch praised the students and officers for their actions during the shooting.
“Our students who were in Berkey Hall -- in addition to being placed in situations that they probably have never encountered before -- when their students, and their classmates, and their friends needed assistance, they rendered aid,” Lynch said.
He said those students, along with first responders who rendered aid to shooting victims as soon as they got to the scene, gave injured people a chance to survive.
A GoFundMe has been created to support Arielle Anderson.
You can watch Thursday’s full briefing below.