A gunman suspected of killing his parents at a Central Michigan University dormitory during a domestic dispute on Friday was still at large, authorities said. The two victims were found inside the residence hall at the university in Mount Pleasant, about 125 miles (200 km) northwest of Detroit, said Lieutenant Larry Klaus of the university’s police force. He identified the suspect as 19-year-old James Eric Davis Jr.
“It was an isolated incident, but we had two people that were killed in a residence facility. That’s traumatic,” Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said at a news conference on Friday afternoon, hours after the shooting. “We will not stop until we resolve that issue and (have) caught this person,” he said. The incident came about two weeks after 17 students and educators were killed by a 19-year-old gunman with an assault-style rifle at a Florida high school.
Davis was considered armed and dangerous, officials said. Local and state authorities were assisting campus police in investigating the shooting and searching for the gunman. “Right now, we do not know where he is,” Klaus told reporters. The two people killed were James Davis Sr. and Diva Davis, who were both 47 and were the parents of the suspect, university officials said on Twitter. James Davis Sr. was a police officer in Bellwood, Illinois, Emanuel Chris Welch, an Illinois state lawmaker, said in a post on Twitter.
Parents and others expected on campus on Friday to pick up students for spring break were told to stay away while the suspect was at large. Davis had been taken to a local hospital on Thursday night after an apparent overdose or “bad reaction to drugs,” Klaus told reporters. Police in patrol cars and helicopters searched for the gunman around an area of apartments north of the campus, according to video posted online by reporters on the scene. Central Michigan University is a four-year, public institution with over 23,000 students enrolled, according to the college’s website.
