Police have released footage of UNLV shooter Anthony Polito after his deadly rampage on the university on Wednesday.
The video shows the gunman being taken down by officers just outside the campus where he is believed to have killed three faculty members and injured another on Wednesday.
A woman who police say they believe to be a professor is also seen in the footage running away from the suspect.
Anthony Polito, 67, was named by police as the suspect in the shooting which ended with his own death.
Law enforcement sources said Polito had unsuccessfully applied for a college professorship at UNLV sometime prior to embarking on the deadly rampage.
Police said he was “struggling financially” at the time of the attack, and that an eviction notice had been taped to his door.
Polito is believed to have sent 22 letters “to various university personnel across the country” at least one of which contained “an unknown white powder” before the shooting. However, police later confirmed that the white power was “harmless.”
Suspect Anthony Polito is seen in surveillance footage before he was taken down by police— (Las Vegas Metropolitan police Department)
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department chief Kevin McMahill added that the suspect had “a list of people he was seeking on a university campus” as well as faculty from Eastern Carolina University.
Sheriff McMahill continued by saying Polito was armed with a handgun and a stash of ammunition when he allegedly shot four faculty members at around 11.45am on Wednesday morning on the campus of the University of Nevada in Beam Hall, where the college’s Lee Business School is located.
UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia said that he first opened fire on the fourth floor of the building before he moved through several other floors.
Police rushed to the scene where they found Polito outside of Beam Hall armed with a handgun. A shootout unfolded and the 67-year-old was then shot dead by police.
Three victims, including assistant professor Patricia Navarro-Velez, 39, and Dr Cha Jan Chang, 64, were killed in the attack. The third victim, who is also believed to be a faculty member, has not yet been identified by police.
A fourth person, who has been identified only as a 38-year-old male who was a visiting professor, is in hospital in a stable condition, police said.
It is not clear if there is a connection between the victims and the gunman or if they were specifically targeted in the mass shooting.
Antony Polito has been identified as the gunman— (Antony Polito website)
Polito’s motive for the attack also remains unclear, but officers said they are searching his home and have seized his cellphone and professional papers to look for possible clues.
The 67-year-old previously worked as a professor at colleges in Georgia and North Carolina and had earned a PhD in management as well as an MBA.
Polito also kept a personal wesbite where he claimed to have cracked the secret of the identity of the infamous Zodiac Killer, who terrorised Northern California in the late 1960s and taunted police with codes.
In asserting his apparent solving of the case, Polito insisted he was not “a total crackpot” or a “dumb guy” but had used his MENSA skills to reach his conclusion.
He also wrote pieces about the “search for intelligent extraterrestrial life” and what he believed to be the real meaning behind the Leonardo DiCaprio movie Inception.
