GOLDSBORO, N.C. — One person was killed Monday in a shooting at a North Carolina community college that was locked down as authorities searched for a gunman, officials said.
Emergency dispatchers received a 911 call about 8 a.m. of an active shooter on the campus of Wayne Community College, county assistant operations manager Daniel Wiggins said. A student told The Associated Press that he heard a single gunshot in a building that houses the library and cafeteria and then saw officers with their guns drawn storming the building.
“There has been one fatality, and there is one shooter,” said Kim Best, spokeswoman for the city of Goldsboro, where the school is located.
The shooter was not in custody, she said. She would not say whether the man was still on campus.
First-year student Jovaun Williams, 24, was climbing the staircase inside the Wayne Learning Center building, which houses the campus library and cafeteria, and had almost reached the second floor when he heard a single muffled pop.
It took a minute, he said, for him to recognize the sound was that of a gunshot similar to the kind he heard growing up in a tough neighborhood near Long Beach, California. He didn’t know where it came from.
“You hear a shot and my biggest things is, get out of there,” he said. “It definitely wasn’t where I was at, so that was good enough for me.”
By the time he walked back downstairs, he saw police officers running into the building with their guns drawn.
Authorities were searching for a white man, about 5-foot-11, with a goatee and a tattoo over his eye.
First-year Student Joniece Simmons, 19, said she was sitting on a bench outside the learning center building when two officers with rifles and a third with a drawn handgun ran toward the building, shouting for students to take cover in a safe place. She and others ran inside to the cafeteria and locked the door.
Though they were urged to stay silent, some students still wanted to talk. “I was like ‘hush, it’s serious.’ I was crying,” Simmons said.
Nearby, the private Wayne County Day School — with about 300 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade — also was on lockdown, said Melissa Watkins, a volunteer parent receptionist at the school.
“We saw 10 to 11 cruisers go by all at once,” she said. “We knew something was going on; we just didn’t know what or where.”
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