Hostage situation at University of Louisville

WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY | Police arrest woman with gun at UofL Belknap campus

A woman who walked into a health services building with a gun at the University of Louisville about 8:30 a.m. Thursday briefly took a counselor hostage before being disarmed, and that incident may be connected to the discovery of the bodies of two young children in an Okolona home....

According to campus police, the woman is a student, and used a gun to hold her female counselor hostage. We're told the student was at the health center trying to get some sort of help, but the situation quickly turned confrontational.

Here is the chronology as presented in the news reports.

1. 8:30am (approx) Woman arrives on campus with a gun.
2. 8:32am A distress alert came in from student services, asking for an officer.
3. 8:34am Campus police dispatch was notified
4. 8:39am A UofL police officer arrived on the scene.
5. 8:43am That officer called for backup.
6. 8:46am That officer found the suspect.
7. 9:04am UofL officials used the new campus alert system to warn students and staff about the armed student, sending emails and text messages to students as well as broadcasting an alert over a PA system.
8. 9:13am Student was disarmed.
   

Thank God that no one on campus was harmed. The anti-gun crowd will hold this up as a victory for the system. I'm sure that they will mention that the police arrived and disarmed the suspect and no lives were lost and no injuries reported. While this is partially true, you must realize that if this woman truly wanted shoot someone on campus, she had approximately 17 minutes to do so before she was found by campus police. Seventeen minutes. That is an eternity when someone has a gun with no one there to stop them. 17 minutes. I argue that the system did not work, merely that the gunman (in this case woman) did not have the conviction to kill... again.

LMPD officials now confirm they received a call from campus police asking them to check the home of the student, and that's where police found two young children who had been fatally shot.

I have not heard details of exactly what happened but sadly it appears that this woman took the lives of her children before she left for the UofL campus.


In a related point... Here is a quote that I just had to post. I love this:

"The university immediately notified the campus through our emergency communication system," UofL President James Ramsey said.

This is priceless! Since when is 18 minutes immediately? EIGHTEEN MINUTES! But it's ok. The campus is a gun-free zone.