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Grad Student Arrested in Univ. Killing
By TOM WITHERS
CLEVELAND (AP) - A camouflage-clad gunman who killed a student and injured two other people during a seven-hour standoff at Case Western Reserve University's business school was a graduate who had sued an employee at the school, authorities said Saturday.
Biswanath Halder, 52, carried two guns and wore a bulletproof vest, wig and ``a kind of World War II Army helmet'' as he walked the halls of the Peter B. Lewis Building and fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition Friday, police Chief Edward Lohn said.
Authorities said 93 people were trapped inside the building for hours, hiding in offices, classrooms and closets.
The Case Western employee who Halder had sued was in the building but escaped during the standoff, University President Edward Hundert said. He said the lawsuit, which accused the employee of having ``added and deleted things from a personal Web site'' belonging to Halder, was dismissed and Halder had lost an appeal about a month ago.
``It's obviously an incredibly sad day for this campus,'' Hundert said. ``People come to a place like this to learn and to grow and to make discoveries and not for this kind of tragedy and violence.''
Mayor Jane Campbell said prosecutors were determining what charges to file against Halder.
Halder, who suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder, was to be released into police custody Saturday, a spokeswoman at Huron Hospital said. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.
The two people who were injured - a man shot in the buttocks and a woman shot in her collar bone - were released from Huron Hospital on Saturday, authorities said.
On Saturday, the rain-soaked campus was nearly deserted a week after classes had ended. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung around the building and a police cruiser guarded the shattered glass back door that the gunman had busted through. A few bouquets of flowers and a planter with yellow buds were placed in front of the building, which the university closed until further notice.
The distinctive structure of the Frank Gehry-designed Case Western business school building, with hallways that dip and swerve, complicated the job for police.
``As the SWAT team entered the building, they were constantly under fire,'' Lohn said. ``They couldn't return fire because of the design of the building. They didn't have a clear shot.''
Lohn said a SWAT team engaged in ``firefights'' throughout the building with Halder and finally cornered him in a room. Police weren't sure when Halder was shot, but said he was apprehended without incident.
``He gave up and he was taken into custody,'' Lohn said.
Hundert said Halder received a master's degree in business administration in 1999 from Case Western.
Campbell described the victim - identified as Norman Wallace, a 30-year-old graduate student from Youngstown - as a ``young man with hope and promise'' who was trying to earn his MBA. Cuyahoga County Deputy Coroner Joseph Felo said the preliminary cause of death was a gunshot wound.
As the gunman began firing, students and faculty members scrambled to get out of the building.
One man lay on the ledge of a third-floor balcony and signaled police to help him get down. A woman sprinted from the building when she had the chance.
``We're all shaking and quite scared. One of the girls in our office is seven months pregnant. We're trying to keep her as calm as possible,'' Tracy Warner, 30, said from a third-floor office where she was hiding with several other people.
Gregory Stoup, 38, an economic research director at the university, barricaded his office's smoked-glass door with furniture to protect himself and four others inside.
``We saw the shadowy figure walk by the door,'' Stoup said. ``He was shooting down at the ground, yelling inaudible cries, sort of a high-pitched scream. We could hear the shell casings clinking on the ground.''
Sachin Goel, 26, a master's student from India, said he was talking with two friends on the first floor outside the cafeteria when the gunman approached and shot one of his friends. ``My friend said he would give me a ride home and then I heard him shouting. I heard gunshots,'' he said.
His friend screamed as he was shot. Goel and his other friend dove under a table and the gunman fired at them.
``But he couldn't get us. And then he again shot at us and we turned the table and put it in front of us,'' Goel said.
Carolyn Solis, who works in the admissions office for the university master's degree program, said she went into the building's atrium after hearing what she thought were firecrackers and seeing students running.
``The gunman was there pointing at me and two other students,'' she said. He fired and missed, she said.
Solis and five other people barricaded themselves in her office by putting a five-drawer file cabinet in front of the glass doors.
``We kept each other calm. We kept each other company,'' she said.
Case Western is in a park-like setting of cultural, medical and educational institutions on the eastern edge of downtown Cleveland. Of the 9,500 who attend the university, 1,600 are enrolled in the Weatherhead School of Management, which is housed in the $62 million Lewis building.
The building, opened in the fall, is five stories high with a curving roof on the south side instead of walls. The roof is made of 20,000 stainless-steel shingles that appear to cascade to the ground.
By TOM WITHERS
CLEVELAND (AP) - A camouflage-clad gunman who killed a student and injured two other people during a seven-hour standoff at Case Western Reserve University's business school was a graduate who had sued an employee at the school, authorities said Saturday.
Biswanath Halder, 52, carried two guns and wore a bulletproof vest, wig and ``a kind of World War II Army helmet'' as he walked the halls of the Peter B. Lewis Building and fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition Friday, police Chief Edward Lohn said.
Authorities said 93 people were trapped inside the building for hours, hiding in offices, classrooms and closets.
The Case Western employee who Halder had sued was in the building but escaped during the standoff, University President Edward Hundert said. He said the lawsuit, which accused the employee of having ``added and deleted things from a personal Web site'' belonging to Halder, was dismissed and Halder had lost an appeal about a month ago.
``It's obviously an incredibly sad day for this campus,'' Hundert said. ``People come to a place like this to learn and to grow and to make discoveries and not for this kind of tragedy and violence.''
Mayor Jane Campbell said prosecutors were determining what charges to file against Halder.
Halder, who suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder, was to be released into police custody Saturday, a spokeswoman at Huron Hospital said. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.
The two people who were injured - a man shot in the buttocks and a woman shot in her collar bone - were released from Huron Hospital on Saturday, authorities said.
On Saturday, the rain-soaked campus was nearly deserted a week after classes had ended. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung around the building and a police cruiser guarded the shattered glass back door that the gunman had busted through. A few bouquets of flowers and a planter with yellow buds were placed in front of the building, which the university closed until further notice.
The distinctive structure of the Frank Gehry-designed Case Western business school building, with hallways that dip and swerve, complicated the job for police.
``As the SWAT team entered the building, they were constantly under fire,'' Lohn said. ``They couldn't return fire because of the design of the building. They didn't have a clear shot.''
Lohn said a SWAT team engaged in ``firefights'' throughout the building with Halder and finally cornered him in a room. Police weren't sure when Halder was shot, but said he was apprehended without incident.
``He gave up and he was taken into custody,'' Lohn said.
Hundert said Halder received a master's degree in business administration in 1999 from Case Western.
Campbell described the victim - identified as Norman Wallace, a 30-year-old graduate student from Youngstown - as a ``young man with hope and promise'' who was trying to earn his MBA. Cuyahoga County Deputy Coroner Joseph Felo said the preliminary cause of death was a gunshot wound.
As the gunman began firing, students and faculty members scrambled to get out of the building.
One man lay on the ledge of a third-floor balcony and signaled police to help him get down. A woman sprinted from the building when she had the chance.
``We're all shaking and quite scared. One of the girls in our office is seven months pregnant. We're trying to keep her as calm as possible,'' Tracy Warner, 30, said from a third-floor office where she was hiding with several other people.
Gregory Stoup, 38, an economic research director at the university, barricaded his office's smoked-glass door with furniture to protect himself and four others inside.
``We saw the shadowy figure walk by the door,'' Stoup said. ``He was shooting down at the ground, yelling inaudible cries, sort of a high-pitched scream. We could hear the shell casings clinking on the ground.''
Sachin Goel, 26, a master's student from India, said he was talking with two friends on the first floor outside the cafeteria when the gunman approached and shot one of his friends. ``My friend said he would give me a ride home and then I heard him shouting. I heard gunshots,'' he said.
His friend screamed as he was shot. Goel and his other friend dove under a table and the gunman fired at them.
``But he couldn't get us. And then he again shot at us and we turned the table and put it in front of us,'' Goel said.
Carolyn Solis, who works in the admissions office for the university master's degree program, said she went into the building's atrium after hearing what she thought were firecrackers and seeing students running.
``The gunman was there pointing at me and two other students,'' she said. He fired and missed, she said.
Solis and five other people barricaded themselves in her office by putting a five-drawer file cabinet in front of the glass doors.
``We kept each other calm. We kept each other company,'' she said.
Case Western is in a park-like setting of cultural, medical and educational institutions on the eastern edge of downtown Cleveland. Of the 9,500 who attend the university, 1,600 are enrolled in the Weatherhead School of Management, which is housed in the $62 million Lewis building.
The building, opened in the fall, is five stories high with a curving roof on the south side instead of walls. The roof is made of 20,000 stainless-steel shingles that appear to cascade to the ground.
