Police still investigating motive of UNLV shooting; school officials cancel classes, finals
Three faculty members at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas died this week and another was seriously injured when a lone gunman walked onto campus and opened fire in the building housing the business school.
The shooting stoked fear on the 30,000-student campus just miles from the Las Vegas Strip, where the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history led to the deaths of 60 people on Oct. 1, 2017.
Las Vegas police are still trying to understand what brought Anthony Polito, a longtime business professor in North Carolina, to campus on Wednesday. 6.
This is what we know:
Anthony James Polito, 67, was a tenured associate professor who left East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, in 2017 after teaching business there for more than 15 years.
He then taught courses at Roseman University of Health Sciences, a 1,000-student private school in the suburb of Henderson, Nevada, between October 2018 and June 2022. The job ended when the program he taught in was shut down.
Polito legally bought a 9mm handgun last year, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said, and was carrying nine magazines of ammunition containing more than 150 rounds when he was shot and killed by UNLV police outside the business school.
McMahill characterized Polito as “struggling financially,” but he did not elaborate beyond saying Polito had an eviction notice taped to the door of his Henderson apartment.
Polito stopped at a post office to mail some letters before arriving at the UNLV campus before noon, McMahill said. He parked near the business school, put ammunition in his waist belt and went inside, authorities said.
Polito roamed the building and shot four faculty members before exiting and being confronted by plainclothes university officials who killed him in a shootout, authorities said.
McMahill said Thursday it was unclear where Polito fired the first shots reported at 11:45 a.m. or how many bullets were fired.
Based on the extra ammunition Polito had, McMahill said more people might have been shot if police had not responded.
Polito sent 22 letters without return addresses to university employees across the country, McMahill said. A white powder found in one of the envelopes was not harmful, the sheriff said.
Polito also had a “target list” containing the names of faculty members from UNLV and East Carolina University with him when he carried out the shooting, but it did not include the names of the shooting victims, the sheriff said.
In Polito's apartment, police found a chair with an arrow pointing to a document that McMahill described as “similar to a will.” The contents of that note were not disclosed.
All four shooting victims were professors, including a 38-year-old visiting professor who is hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, authorities said.
Killed were:
– Naoko Takemaru, 69, associate professor of Japanese studies and author who oversaw the university's Japanese studies program and received the William Morris Award for Excellence in Teaching from UNLV's College of Liberal Arts.
— Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64, associate professor of Management, Entrepreneurship at the business school & Department of Technology. He holds degrees from Taiwan, Central Michigan University and Texas A&M University, according to his online resume, and he earned a Ph.D. in management information systems from the University of Pittsburgh.
– Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, accounting professor with a Ph.D. in accounting, which focused on cybersecurity disclosure research and data analytics, according to the school's website.
Colleagues paid tribute to the victims during a press conference on Friday evening.
Navarro-Velez, a Puerto Rico-born mother of four, joined the UNLV faculty in 2019. Jason Smith, chairman of the accounting department, said she had impressive professional achievements and was someone with a “larger-than-life personality and an infectious smile” who enjoyed socializing. gatherings and sharing her home-baked desserts.
Chang, who joined UNLV in 2001, is survived by his wife and two children.
A calm man who never seemed to get angry, Chang was “a rigorous researcher and a good teacher who loved his students deeply,” said Keah-Choon Tan, professor of operations management, marketing and international business.
Chang loved UNLV so much that he and his wife talked about one day donating his body to the university's medical school for research, Tan said. The school does not accept such donations, but his colleague's body will be donated for medical studies at another institution, Tan said.
Margaret Harp, associate professor of French, said Takemaru was hired in 2003 to develop a Japanese language program.
Takemaru, a former concert pianist who left that profession due to a physical disability, was an inspiring instructor who also embroidered beautifully, brought homemade chocolates to work every holiday and loved cats so much that her office is “covered from floor to ceiling, wall to wall used to be. with cat pictures, drawings, puzzles and calendars,” Harp said.
“Noaku was physically weak. But she was passionate in her kindness,” Harp said.
Final exams and the last week of in-person classes this semester have been canceled. University President Keith Whitfield told students and staff Friday that students' final grades will be based on work completed before Wednesday's shooting.
He cited the loss of faculty members and the physical and emotional trauma the university has endured.
“What our university endured on December 6 is nothing short of life-changing. We will never forget that day,” he said at a press conference on Friday evening.
Whitfield set a Dec. 18 deadline for students to take optional, online final exams or complete take-home tests to improve their grades. Commencement ceremonies are still scheduled for December 19-20.
The five-story building where the shooting took place remained closed Friday.
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Associated Press writer Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.