Police seek additional shooters in Virginia State University incident

A shooting involving multiple suspects at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, wounded five people early Saturday, triggering a campus-wide lockdown that lasted several hours.

The incident occurred around 1:30 a.m. near the university's Quad Annexes on Boisseau Street. Campus police and Chesterfield County officers responded to the scene and found five people suffering from gunshot wounds outside dormitories. All five were transported to area hospitals.

Police arrested 19-year-old Camron Harris of Henrico, Virginia, on Saturday after finding him hiding in a dormitory closet. According to Chesterfield County Police, Harris is not a student at the university. Four of the five injured people were also not students.

Authorities said one person was wounded critically, while the other four sustained injuries that were not life-threatening, according to initial reports from the university.

The campus lockdown was lifted at 8:21 a.m., hours after the shooting occurred. VSU police first posted that shots were fired near the Quads at 1:58 a.m. on Saturday.

Investigators were seeking additional people who fired weapons during the incident. Lt. James Lamb, commander of the Chesterfield County Police Department's Major Crimes Unit, said authorities were trying to determine what led to the shooting and whether the others who fired did so in self-defense or if they were among the aggressors. Lamb said investigators did not yet have specific locations where they were looking for the additional shooters as they worked on identifying them.

The shooting came as students were preparing for the new school year. The university is located approximately 20 miles south of Richmond. Both campus and Chesterfield County police are actively investigating the incident.