UNC Chapel Hill under lockdown for second time because of gunman

Local police cleared students, faculty and others at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to “resume normal activities” more than an hour after the school community was under lockdown over a warning of an “armed and dangerous person.”

It’s the second time that the school has been under a lockdown under a similar threat since the start of the semester. University officials canceled classes for the rest of the day following the lockdown, said UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz during a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.

“All clear. All clear,” local police wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, at 2:10 p.m.

At 12:54 p.m., the university sent an email saying they “have activated the Alert Carolina sirens because police report an armed and dangerous person on or near campus.” People were instructed to “go inside immediately, close windows and doors, stay until further notice” and “follow directions from emergency responders.”

What happened?

Brian James, chief of police at UNC Chapel Hill, said that witnesses described the suspect brandishing a gun at a bagel shop called Alpine Bagel in the campus’s Student Union, over an employment-related conflict. The suspect was identified as Mickel Deonte Harris, 27.

The man was apprehended and arrested “on outstanding warrants related to an assault an assault on September 5, 2023,” according to a news release from the Chapel Hill Police Department.

Police are still reviewing campus footage from Wednesday, he said. They “believe there was some sort of connection” between the armed person and the suspect, said James but the man’s motive is still unclear.

UNC Chancellor: ‘It’s sad and alarming”

“It’s sad and alarming that there have now been two lockdowns over the past 16 days on our campus where we’ve had to apprehend individuals who violated the safety and well-being of our community,” said Guskiewicz.

He reminded the campus community about restrictions on firearms on campus: “I want to be clear: Guns are prohibited on our campus and every campus across the state of North Carolina.”

Second threat since the start of semester

The lockdown on Wednesday is the second one issued by campus police in response to threats of gunfire on or near campus in the last three weeks.

Three weeks ago, the campus community went under a three-hour lockdown when a graduate student Tailei Qi, 34, shot and killed Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the department of applied physical sciences, on campus with a firearm. Qi was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and for having a firearm on campus, according to court records. Guskiewicz said the incidents are not related.

The lockdown triggered recent memories for Jason Naulty, a law student at UNC Chapel Hill. Naulty was in the same classroom on campus that he was in on Aug. 28 when he and other students received a similar alert.

He and his peers thought there could have been a glitch in the system, he said, because the timing of the alert was sent out so close to the last one. But when they realized there another armed person was on campus, Naulty said he felt a “magnified sense of frustration.”

“Thankfully no one was hurt or anything. I think my general feeling after today is just more frustration than anything … Today it was just the palpable sense of disbelief really,” he said.

Naulty and his peers will have to make up the two missed classes due to the lockdowns, he said, adding another layer of frustration to his worries about “gun policy and gun culture in this country.”

On Tuesday at the North Carolina Legislature, protestors from the university’s chapter of March For Our Lives called on people to vote out state legislators for not acting on gun reform, The Hill reported, and kicked out of the meeting. Other students took to social media during Wednesday’s lockdown to call for stricter gun measures in the state and across the nation.

Gun-involved shootings on America’s schools school campuses has hit a record high with 188 shootings with casualties during the 2021-2022 school year, according to federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Contributing: Jeanine Santucci, Itzel Luna, Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY

Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @kaylajjimenez.