Dartmouth College sheltered in place late Friday after shooting near campus

Dartmouth College sheltered in place late Friday after shooting near campus Visit The Boston Globe Scr...

Dartmouth College sheltered in place late Friday after shooting near campus

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Emergency vehicles gathered on School Street in Hanover, N.H., on Friday night after reports of a gunshot in the area.

HANOVER, N.H. â€" A person was shot near Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Friday night, prompting a lockdown of the Ivy League School and causing police to probe reports of additional shots being fired on campus.

The person shot was not a Dartmouth student, and their condition was not known Friday night. The shooting occurred at 9:50 p.m. at the Christian Science Reading Room at 1 School St., Dartmouth said in a statement.

The gunman, according to a school statement posted shortly after 11 p.m., was at large “and additional shots are being reported from various campus locations.” It was unclear if a suspect or suspects had been taken into custody early Saturday.

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Shortly before 11:55 p.m., the school described the situation as “active.”

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After more than two hours of the campus being in lockdown, Dartmouth announced at 12:35 a.m. Saturday that the shelter in place order was lifted. Hanover police had investigated reports of shots fired elsewhere on campus but “found nothing to indicate shots occurred in those locations,” the college said in a statement.

A Dartmouth spokeswoman confirmed in an e-mail late Friday night that a person was shot and taken to a hospital, adding that the shooting took place off-campus and that the victim did not attend Dartmouth.

Hanover police could not be reached for comment.

A spokesman for New Hampshire State Police said no information was available at the incident early Saturday.

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“Dartmouth has no further information from Hanover Police to share at this time,” said the school in a statement posted at 12:35 a.m. Saturday.

In a tweet, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununusaid, “State officials are aware of the developing situation at @Dartmouth in Hanover, and NH State Police are on site and have been directed to assit in any way possible.”

At the scene of the shooting, Hanover police, fire and other emergency vehicles blocked School Street for about a block in each direction. A New Hampshire State Police K-9 Unit was also on scene. The reading room, which is part of the First Church of Christ Scientist, is located about a block from downtown Hanover, and about a block-and-a-half from the college.

Attempts to reach church officials were unsuccesful Friday evening.

The campus lockdown did not appear to affect business in the downtown. As a steady rain fell outside, people were inside restaurants and pubs, eating, drinking and watching sports on large-screen televisions. Just before midnight, workers preparing for the opening of a new business, Farmhouse Pottery, continued to bring product from an Enterprise van into the building on Main Street.

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Restaurant patrons occasionally emerged around midnight and walked up the street unhurried, under umbrellas, to their cars.

In contrast, the Dartmouth campus seemed unusually quiet late on a Friday night. Streets closest to the student dorms were deserted. Major campus buildings, such as the Baker-Berry Library and the Hopkins Center for the Arts, appeared to close early.

The library’s expansive lobby was still open just before midnight, but the doors to the reading rooms and books were locked. The library usually is open until 2 a.m.

Some students described the lockdown as unsettling.

Skylar Miklus, an 18-year-old freshman student at Dartmouth who grew up in Wellesley, Mass., said two people running by on campus said there was a shooting nearby. Another student dismissed the comments as a joke, Miklus said.

Miklus then received an alert notifying about the shooting and sought shelter in the basement of a fraternity.

“I could not comprehend it as real at first,” said Miklus over the phone from the building’s basement late Friday night, where 22 others had taken shelter. “Once I received the text, I realized it was [real] and I was very freaked out.”

Miklus described the mood on campus Friday night as “definitely panicked” and “still on edge right now.”

“This is a scenario that I’ve imagined over and over again since the Parkland shooting,” said Miklus, who plans to major in philosophy, just before midnight. “This has been a huge source of anxiety for me.”

Jacob Maguire, a 19-year-old sophomore from North Kingstown, R.I., said he was in his dorm at about 10:20 p.m. when he heard about a possible shooting in Hanover from a groupchat. He received an official alert from the school about 10 minutes later.

He said he’s read about past campus and school shootings throughout the US and, through a campus Democratic organization, has advocated for gun safety reforms. For a sho oting to occur in Hanover that prompted the Dartmouth campus to be locked, he said, is “pretty frightening.”

He said he messaged his siblings to let them know he was OK and also communicated with his stepmother to convey that he was unharmed.

“I think my mom’s asleep and I’m sure she’ll be terrified when she hears about this,” said Maguire, who is considering pursuing majors in history and government.

Jimmy Cronin, a 19-year-old freshman from Rye, N.Y., said some students initially dismissed reports of the shooting, thinking it was probably someone playing with firecrackers. Then came a deluge of information. There were lots of texts asking if he was OK, and imploring him to be safe, said Cronin, who hunkered down in his friend’s dorm and turned on a police scanner.

“Obviously when something like this happens you just don’t believe that this is going on,” said Cronin during a phone interview after midnight. “You hear about shootings in the news at other places and you think ‘This could never happen to me.’”

Correspondents Jackson Cote and Alejandro Serrano contributed. Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Danny__McDonald. Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.comSource: Google News | Netizen 24 United States