Police are seeking additional individuals who discharged firearms during a shooting incident at Virginia State University that resulted in five injuries, authorities announced Sunday. A 19-year-old suspect is in custody as investigators work to determine the full circumstances of the event.
Investigators are working to ascertain the events that led to the Saturday morning shooting and whether other individuals who fired weapons did so in self-defense or were among the aggressors, according to Lt. James Lamb of the Chesterfield County Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit. Lamb did not specify how many other individuals fired weapons.
The shooting occurred around 1:30 a.m. Saturday near the university’s Quad Annexes, prompting a campus lockdown. Campus police and Chesterfield County officers discovered five individuals with gunshot wounds outside campus dormitories. Many students had recently participated in the university’s “New Trojans Experience” program for incoming students. Classes are scheduled to resume Monday.
Camron Harris, 19, of Henrico, Virginia, was arrested in a dormitory closet more than 14 hours after the shooting. He is being held without bond in the Chesterfield County jail and is due in state court Monday. Harris faces four counts of malicious wounding and four counts of using a firearm in the commission of a felony.
The victims range in age from 17 to 23, and only one was a student at Virginia State University, police reported. Harris is not a student at the university.
Virginia State University, located in Ettrick, Virginia, is a historically Black university with approximately 5,700 students, most of whom are undergraduates. It was the first fully state-supported four-year college for Black Americans.