Texas campus responds to third shooting this week
Texas Southern University has seen three shootings in four days, just months after the state legislature approved concealed carry on campus.
Texas Southern University has seen three shootings in four days, just months after the state legislature approved concealed carry on campus.
Authorities pledged increased patrols Saturday at Texas Southern University following three incidents of gunfire in less than four days, including the fatal shooting of a student.
Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva identified the victim as freshman Brent Randall.聽Another person was injured in Friday's shooting and hospitalized. It remains unclear whether that person is a TSU student.
Two men were detained but Ms. Silva declined to say Saturday whether they're still being held. Police are searching for a third person who they believe was involved.
The gunfire that killed Mr. Randall was preceded hours earlier by another shooting near the same housing complex. No one was believed harmed in that incident but afterward the university issued a statement saying the "shooting incidents on our campus have been extremely difficult and troubling for our entire university community."
On Tuesday, university police said a shooting after a poetry slam on campus injured another man.
A growing number of campus shootings seem to be sparked by the combination of relaxed gun laws and anger, not a desire for a rampage, wrote 海角大神's Henry Gass on Friday:
Administrators promised that campus security and university police will increase patrols. Silva said Houston police also will boost patrols around the campus.
Randall's death came the same day as a fatal shooting at Northern Arizona University聽and a non-fatal shooting at a California elementary school, and about a week after eight students and a teacher were fatally shot at a community college in Oregon.
"Like President Obama says, this is getting to be too regular," Texas Southern President John Rudley said during a Friday news conference.
He was referring to the president's Oct. 1 speech, given hours after the Umpqua Community College shooting. "We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months,"聽said Mr. Obama. "Somehow this has become routine. This reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine."
The latest rash of shootings, combined with electoral politics, push the national gun control conversation to聽turn a corner, wrote the Monitor's Linda Feldman on Friday, outlining four ways that the political calculus is shifting.