The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill police issued an “all clear” order Wednesday afternoon after initially ordering students to take shelter and avoid windows amid reports of an “armed and dangerous” person on campus.
A suspect, 27-year-old Mickel Deonte Harris, was arrested in connection with the incident, according to local news outlets. No injuries were reported.
“All clear. All clear. Resume normal activities,” UNC Police said in a statement about an hour after issuing an emergency alert. A statement from UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz reportedly said the lockdown was initiated when a person was seen brandishing a weapon in the student union.
The campus community is still recovering from a deadly shooting around two weeks ago when a doctoral student shot and killed a faculty member.
On Tuesday, students from UNC and North Carolina A&T State University staged a protest in favor of gun control measures at the North Carolina General Assembly, spending the entire day at the state legislative house, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.
Some participants told the local newspaper that the Aug. 28 incident was not their first exposure to the threat of an active shooter.
“Why does this keep happening? We have had shooting after shooting after shooting for decades,” Luke Diasio, an activist with UNC’s chapter of March For Our Lives, told the outlet.
The student protesters rallied inside the building, chanting at lawmakers, “Vote them out!”
In a video posted to social media Wednesday, sirens could be heard on campus in an eerie echo of the last shooting.
The suspect in that case, 34-year-old Tailei Qui, was charged with the murder of associate professor Zijie Yan, who worked at the university’s physics department. Yan had been Qui’s faculty adviser.