Gun incident spurs building evacuation

Columbus State Community College police are investigating an incident in which a man was seen with a gun in a campus building Wednesday and then left in a car with a woman identified by police as his girlfriend.

After initially evacuating and searching the Center for Teaching and Learning and then allowing students and instructors back into the building, college officials decided around 11:30 a.m. to close the school for the day and send everyone home.

“We are confident the initial threat has passed, but this was traumatic for everyone,” Columbus State Police Chief Sean Asbury said. “We’re giving people some time to recalibrate.”

He said a number of students and parents had called to say they were afraid to go to the campus.

The man with the gun is not a student, but the woman he left with is, Asbury said. “We have spoken to her, and she is OK,” he said.

Although there were reports of an altercation, Asbury would say only that the incident remains under investigation. He did not release the woman’s name, and the man has not been identified.

He said officials had not yet reviewed surveillance video that might have captured what happened.

An initial alert that went to Columbus State students and employees referred to an “active shooter” situation, Asbury said, because police didn’t know yet what was happening. “That’s a template that we have, and we wanted to get information out as quickly as we could to keep the campus as safe as possible.”

A text alert and email said that a man had been seen with a gun, and they described him as black and wearing a black shirt and sweatpants with a light-brown jacket.

Joseph Kelich, an interactive-media student from Columbus, said he was in a different building when the alert went out, and he stayed there until officials said the threat had passed.

Student Carson Riggs said he wasn’t unduly frightened, but he didn’t mind a day off from school. “I think everybody’s in line for a mental-health day at this point.”