Las Vegas shooting suspect had hit list with names of UNLV, ECU staff
The man accused of shooting and killing three people Wednesday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, formerly taught at East Carolina University and graduated from Duke University.
The suspected gunman, Anthony Polito, 67, was killed in a shootout with law enforcement, police said. Sources say Polito had recently applied for a job at UNLV but was not hired.
Polito had previously worked at East Carolina University, according to an ECU spokesperson. Polito began working at ECU in 2001 as an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management in the College of Business. He resigned from ECU in 2017 as a tenured associate professor.
Investigators discovered a hit list among the belongings of the suspected shooter. The list contained the names of people the suspect intended to target both on UNLV campus and at ECU.
WITN is reporting Greenville police went to a staff member's door on Thursday night to check on them. WRAL News has reached out to Greenville police for more information on just how many ECU faculty the suspected shooter had on his hit list.
Also, WRAL News has reached out to the U.S. Postal Service and ECU to find out more about the 22 letters that were sent to university personnel across the country. Who the letters were sent to and what was sent has prompted investigations. WRAL News has yet to hear back from the U.S. Postal Service and ECU.
Polito's ties to North Carolina date back to 1991, when he graduated from a weekend MBA program within Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, according to school records.
No students were killed in the shooting and all victims were faculty members, school officials announced Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
WRAL News on Thursday spoke with Erick Smithwick, who took a class with Polito at ECU in 2006.
"He was a very affable, fun-loving, easy to get along with professor," Smithwick said. "[He was] not threatening ... he cared about his students and wanted his students to engage with his lecturing."
Other students told WRAL News Polito was engaging, describing the professor talked about his love for the city of Las Vegas while teaching.
"The majority of his focus was on the supply chain of Las Vegas, casinos and hotels and how they ran," said Louise Walker Stubbs, who took Polito's supply chain management class at ECU in 2015. "He was obsessed with Las Vegas ... I was just shocked to have been in class with him [and] sad for the people of Las Vegas."
Students and community members gathered Wednesday night at UNLV to mourn the deaths of three people, whose names and ages have not been shared. Classes were suspended for the week.
Smithwick told WRAL News he "can't imagine" his former professor is the shooting suspect.
"He cared about his students in my opinion," he said. "I learned from him a lot from him ... he even referred me for a scholarship later on."
Reports of shots fired at UNLV on Wednesday about 11:45 a.m. sent police swarming onto the campus while students and professors barricaded themselves inside classrooms and dorm rooms.
Police said the shooting started on the fourth floor of the building that houses UNLV’s Lee Business School. The gunman went to several floors before he was killed in a shootout with two university detectives outside the building, said UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia.
A fourth person was injured.
Authorities gave the all-clear about 40 minutes after the first report of an active shooter.
Las Vegas is still mourning the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, which occurred in October 2017 when a gunman killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 after opening fire from the window of a room at Mandalay Bay casino on the Las Vegas Strip a couple of miles from the UNLV campus.
