Invisible Adjunct

The College Instructor's Worst Nightmare

A student shows up with a grievance and a gun. The new twist: someone shows up claiming "to be a member of al Qaeda":

An armed man took students and a teacher hostage Wednesday in a classroom at Dyersburg State Community College in Dyersburg, Tennessee, officials said.

The group is being held in a classroom on the upper floor of the campus administration building, said college spokesman Buck Tarpley.

Very scary. He says he wants to kill himself. The unthinkable thought, of course, is that he plans to take the others along with him. I hope they make it out unharmed.

UPDATE:

The NYTimes reports that the gunman is still holding at least a dozen people hostage. He released three students (all of them women, one of them pregnant) earlier this afternoon. They have identified him as "Harold Kilpatrick Jr., a 26-year-old Memphis man who was staying in Dyersburg with his sister." He is neither a student nor an employee of the college. He left a suicide note at his sister's house, which says he "'wanted to kill some people and die today,'" and also states that he "didn't like Americans and had spoken with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden." Though it is obviously extremely unlikely that he has anything to do with al-Qaida, the FBI have been called in.

FURTHER UPDATE:

CNN reports:

The man who took a group of Dyersburg State Community College students and their teacher hostage Wednesday was killed by police after he began firing a gun in the classroom, Dyersburg Police Chief Bob Williamson said.

Posted by Invisible Adjunct at September 17, 2003 07:12 PM