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Professor Fatally Shot on Delta State Campus

CLEVELAND, Miss. — A professor was killed in his office at Delta State University in Mississippi, forcing terrified students and teachers to hunker down in classrooms as investigators searched for another school employee in connection with the killing, officials said Monday.

Investigators are searching for Shannon Lamb, who was initially identified as a person of interest and is now considered a suspect, Cleveland Police Chief Charles “Buster” Bingham said. Police do not yet know a motive in the slaying of Ethan Schmidt, a history professor at Delta State.

Bingham said Lamb is considered armed and dangerous but is not believed to be on campus anymore.

Lamb received a doctorate in education from Delta State University in the spring 2015, according to a copy of his résumé posted on the university’s website. He started working there in 2009 and taught geography and education classes, and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, according to the résumé.

Lamb also has been linked to a slaying in Gautier, about 300 miles away in south Mississippi, though authorities have not provided many details about that slaying.

Gautier police spokesman Matthew Hoggatt told The Sun Herald that a woman was found dead in her home, and that Lamb is the suspect in her death.

“We’re working right now under the assumption that both events are related,” Hoggatt said. “We hope that they are not. But at this point in time, information indicates that they probably are linked in some way, shape or form.”

Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Johnny Poulos said investigators are searching for a black 2011 Dodge Avenger that they believe Lamb is driving.

The 3,500-student university in Cleveland, in Mississippi’s Delta region near the Arkansas-Mississippi state line, was first put on lockdown around 10:45 a.m. amid reports of an active shooter. Everyone on campus was told to take shelter, away from windows.

Charlie King was in a history class down the hall from where the shooting occurred.

“A few minutes into the class, we heard these popping noises and we all went completely silent,” he said.

Some people thought that it might be a desk or door closing or firecrackers, but King said he thought it sounded like gunshots. A few minutes later a police officer — gun drawn — burst into the windowless room and ordered everyone to get against the wall away from the door. Some people also hid in a storage closet, King said. The officer didn’t explain what was going on, but King said the students understood.

The slain professor directed the first-year seminar program and specialized in Native American and colonial history, said Don Allan Mitchell, an English professor at the school, who called him “a gentleman in every sense of the word.”

“Dr. Ethan Schmidt was a terrific family man, a good friend, a true son of Peabody, Kansas, and his beloved Emporia State University,” he said.

Pettus reported from Jackson. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill and Rebecca Santana in New Orleans Alina Hartounian in Phoenix and Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kansas, contributed to this report.

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