East Lansing, Mich.—Police said Tuesday that the 43-year-old shooter who killed three students and injured five others at Michigan State University had no apparent connection to the campus as they continued to look for a possible motive for the hours-long shootings that terrified the neighborhood.

Just before 8:30 p.m. on Monday, investigators were trying to determine why Anthony McRae opened fire inside the student union and an academic building. After an hour-long lockdown at the campus in East Lansing, the shooter committed suicide after being confronted by police miles away.

The shooting, the latest in what has turned out to be a deadly new year in the United States, took place the day before the fifth anniversary of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that claimed 17 lives.

“We have to do something to stop the gun violence that’s ripping apart our communities,” President Joe Biden said in a speech Tuesday, mentioning Michigan State.

In the meantime, a school district in Ewing Township, New Jersey, was forced to close for the day after an investigation revealed that McRae, who formerly resided there, had a note indicating a threat to the local schools in his pocket. However, it was found that there was no credible threat, the superintendent and local police said in a later statement. Despite fighting back tears during a news conference on Tuesday, Dr Denny Martin reported that five patients at Sparrow Hospital were still in critical condition.

Chris Rozman, deputy chief of campus police, stated that McRae, of Lansing, was not a student or employee of Michigan State, adding that "we have absolutely no idea what the motive was."

Rozman declared that "this is still in flux." We are still putting the pieces together at crime scenes to try to understand what happened, and there are still crime scenes that are being processed.

All of the victims were from the Detroit region. Both Arielle Anderson and Brian Fraser, the president of the fraternity Phi Delta Theta, graduated from different high schools in the Grosse Pointe area. Alexandria Verner also passed away; she had graduated from Clawson High School in another Detroit neighborhood.

Billy Shellenbarger, the superintendent of Clawson Elementary School, wrote in an email to parents, "If you knew her, you loved her, and we will forever remember the lasting impact she has had on all of us."

On the northern edge of the 5,200-acre Michigan State campus, one of the biggest in the country, the shootings took place in an area of older, stately buildings. East Lansing's downtown, which is teeming with eateries, bars, and shops, is just across frantic Grand River Avenue.

At the morning briefing, governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Michigan State alumna, said, "Our Spartan community is reeling today."

She claimed that during a phone call, Biden expressed his support.

"We pray for those who are still fighting for their lives as we mourn the loss of beautiful souls today." "Bullets and bloodshed have shattered another place that is supposed to be about community and unity," Whitmer said.

About 50,000 students attend Michigan State, 19,000 of whom live on campus. Students hid wherever they could on Monday night as hundreds of officers searched the campus, which is located about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

When McRae appeared on school security cameras at 11 p.m., police were still looking for him. His image was quickly shared with the media. As soon as they saw the image, an "alert citizen" who recognized him from the Lansing region called the police, according to Rozman.

Shaked stated, "We never spoke to him." He never looked at anyone while walking or riding his bike, according to the witness.

Students thought back on the terrifying previous night. Around 8:15 p.m., Dominik Molotky claims he and the other students were studying Cuban history when they heard a gunshot outside the classroom. A few seconds later, the shooter entered and fired three to four more rounds, he told ABC's "Good Morning America."

The rest of the students were doing the same as I was, according to Molotky.

On NBC's "Today," sophomore Claire Papoulias described how she and other students scurried to escape a history class through a window after the shooter barged in through a back door and started firing.

"I kind of hit the ground a little after falling out of the window." "I remember just running for my life, so I just grabbed my backpack and my phone," she recalled.

For 48 hours, all classes, sports, and other events were canceled. Teresa Woodruff, the interim president of the university, said it would be a time "to think, grieve, and come together."

Numerous mass shootings have claimed the lives of dozens of people so far in 2023, most notably in California, where 11 people were murdered as they celebrated the Lunar New Year at a club frequented by older Asian Americans. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the United States in 2022, each of which resulted in at least four fatalities or injuries.