After an active shooter alert panicked the University of South Carolina campus Sunday evening, police said they found no evidence of a gunman or shots fired.
The university alerted students through its emergency notification system around 6:30 p.m. that an active shooter had been reported at the Thomas Cooper Library on Greene Street. The university advised the campus community to shelter in place.
Students rushed from the library. Across campus, students and others sought safety inside, and some erected barricades.
But USC officials said around 7:15 p.m. on Sunday there was “no evidence” of an active shooter, and at 8:05 p.m., the university issued an “all clear.” The library remained closed.
The university said there were two minor injuries related to the evacuation of the building, but no shooting-related injuries were reported.
“We could not find an active shooter. We did find people who said they heard something that could have been gunshots. We didn’t find any shell casings,” Scott Prill, the university’s deputy police chief, said at a news briefing Sunday evening. “We also received some reports that there have been some other hoaxes at universities.”
Videos circulating on social media that claim to show a suspect carrying a firearm are false, USC officials said.
The incident remains under investigation.
The shooter was described as a 6-foot white man with black pants. Reporters on scene saw students running with arms raised near the library, and law enforcement officers and firefighters responded to the area.
Agencies responding to the reported active shooter included university police, the Columbia Police Department, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the FBI.
The scare left few people outdoors on campus; the bustling thoroughfares resembled a ghost town. It also disrupted student activities.
Kayda Thomas, Emersyn Smith and Talia Diaz were eating supper at USC’s Russell House when people began running into the student center worried about a reported shooter on campus.
The next they knew, the first-year students and a crowd rushed into a kitchen area and barricaded the door, hoping to protect themselves.
“It’s just one of the scariest moments I’ve been through,’’ Thomas said.
Two students were injured, apparently in the stampede to get away, according to Thomas and her friends, who are from Fort Mill. One student had a head injury and the other was bleeding from the knee, Thomas, Smith and Diaz said.
The Catholic Student Mission had tables set up for an apparent barbecue on Greene and Pickens streets. Abandoned, the air still smelled of hamburgers.
Down the street at the Methodist student center, abandoned burgers were found on the grills just after 7:30 p.m. and a game of cornhole had been disrupted.
Cool Beans, a coffee shop on College Street, locked its doors and was encouraging people to stay on the shop’s top floor. Chloe Gardner, an employee, said they were staying alert and making sure patrons were safe.
“I was literally standing outside [the library] … somebody came and yelled at me, ‘Active shooter, active shooter, active shooter,’ ” said Sky Johnson, 21, a USC Upstate student visiting his sister for the weekend.
Jocelyn O’Neal, 41, a worker at the Panera Bread in the Russell House, said the students “just started running.”
“We were just concerned about the kids because everybody was panicking and basically running over each other,” O’Neal said.
Campus is now operating normally. USC said that students who wish to receive emotional support resources should contact the Office of Student Health and Well-Being.
Staff writer Sammy Fretwell contributed to this story.
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