Rodney Overton and Ashley Anderson
17 minutes ago
Chapel Hill, North Carolina (WNCN) – A UNC-Chapel Hill gave a full survey After an armed individual was active on campus for hours Monday afternoon, officials told everyone to stay away from Caudill Labs, where shots were fired around 1 p.m.
UNC officials later said the active attacker incident occurred “at Caudill Laboratories on the University of North Carolina campus.”
Video obtained by CBS 17 shows several armed law enforcement officers inside Caudill Labs during the lockdown earlier Monday afternoon. The video, posted by Brendan Lynch, shows a corridor inside Caudill Laboratories with officers walking with guns raised and wearing bulletproof vests.
Earlier, there was a large presence of law enforcement and EMS vehicles on both sides of the road outside the Genome Sciences Building and South Road was largely closed. University of North Carolina students and faculty barricaded themselves in bedrooms, offices and classrooms for hours
After evacuating the area around 4:15 p.m. Monday, officials have yet to confirm whether anyone was shot. At approximately 5 p.m., UNC officials said the suspect was taken into custody at approximately 2:38 p.m.
Police released a photo of the person of interest on or near the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. According to the UNC website, the photo matches an ID photo of a student named Tailei Qi.
Tailei Qi was a member of Yan Research Group, which is associated with Caudill Labs, according to UNC records.
The first alert was sent to the school shortly after 1:00 p.m. At 1:50 p.m., officials posted to X that the shelter-in-place order was still in effect and that it was an “ongoing situation.” About 40 minutes later, the school added a post that said: “Stay where you are. This is an ongoing condition. The suspect is at large.”
About two hours after the first alert was issued, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police cars on the scene and several helicopters hovering over the school.
One of the officers berated two people trying to get out of the student center, shouting “Inside, now!” After about 10 minutes, law enforcement forces escorted a group of students out of a scientific building, and everyone was walking in an orderly line with their hands up.
Shortly before 4 p.m., students and faculty began moving out of the campus buildings, as the lockdown ended.
The report of the shooting and subsequent closure paralyzed the campus and parts of the surrounding town of Chapel Hill a week after classes began at the state’s leading public university. The university has approximately 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students.
The Associated Press contributed to this report