{"id":815391,"date":"2026-08-16T09:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T09:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/815391\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T09:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T09:44:10","slug":"five-wounded-in-shooting-at-virginia-state-university-suspect-arrested-crime-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/815391\/","title":{"rendered":"Five wounded in shooting at Virginia State University, suspect arrested | Crime News"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to police, the suspect is not a student at the university, nor were four of the five injured.<\/p>\n

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Published On 15 Aug 202615 Aug 2026<\/p>\n

A 19-year-old has been arrested in connection with a shooting on a Virginia university campus that wounded five people, one critically.<\/p>\n

Police arrested Camron Harris of Henrico, Virginia, on Saturday after finding the suspect hiding in a dormitory closet.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

According to Chesterfield County Police, Harris is not a student at the university, nor were four of the five injured.<\/p>\n

The shooting, just after 1:30am (5:30 GMT) on Saturday, triggered an hours-long campus-wide lockdown. The university lifted the lockdown hours later, at 8:21am (12:21 GMT).<\/p>\n

All five of the wounded were taken to hospital, including one in critical condition, according to the university.<\/p>\n

Authorities said the victims ranged in age from 17 to 23. One of them, a 20-year-old student, has since been released from the hospital.<\/p>\n

The names of those wounded have not been released.<\/p>\n

Police obtained eight felony warrants against Harris, including for malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.<\/p>\n

The authorities have not disclosed a possible motive.<\/p>\n

Arthur Fridrich, the university\u2019s former director of distance education, said: \u201cFor those that were shot, my heart bleeds. I hope that they all mend and somehow do not let this event define their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The university said in an earlier statement that authorities were searching for multiple suspects, but police gave no additional information.<\/p>\n

The shooting happened two days before the university\u2019s autumn semester is due to start.<\/p>\n

Virginia State University is a historically Black university in Ettrick, about 39 kilometres (24 miles) south of the state capital of Richmond.<\/p>\n

It has about 5,700 students and was the first fully state-supported four-year college for Black Americans.<\/p>\n

Gun violence at colleges and universities in the US is relatively common. The Gun Violence Archive, a national tracker, recorded 75 shootings at higher education institutions in 2025, with a total of 100 victims.<\/p>\n

One of the most high-profile attacks in recent years was in Virginia, when a gunman fatally shot 32 people and wounded 17 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, also known as Virginia Tech, in 2007.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a man opened fire at a Reserve Officers\u2019 Training Corps (ROTC) group at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia, killing an instructor and wounding two others.<\/p>\n

In a statement on social media, Governor Abigail Spanberger said she and her husband were \u201cpraying for a quick recovery for those who were shot this morning at Virginia State University, and our thoughts are with the VSU community\u201d.<\/p>\n

She also thanked first responders and law enforcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to police, the suspect is not a student at the university, nor were four of the five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3071,3,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":["post-815391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-crime","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}