A shooting across the street from Auburn University’s campus early Sunday killed one person and wounded four others, three of them teens, in an incident that does not appear random, police in the southeast Alabama city said.
The shooting happened hours after students had celebrated a win over Alabama State’s football team Saturday evening.
Auburn city police received a report of gunfire about 2:24 a.m. (3:24 a.m. ET) on West Magnolia Avenue, a popular thoroughfare featuring bars and restaurants and forming the northern border of campus, which is home to about 30,000 students.
Officers “were already in the immediate vicinity of the call dispersing a large crowd,” according to a police news release.
The university’s emergency alert system sent a tweet at around 4 a.m. informing students that there had been a shooting and warning them to stay away from the area.
A 20-year-old man from Tuskegee, 20 miles southwest of Auburn, was found dead at the scene, having suffered apparent gunshot wounds, police said.
Also shot were two males, 16 and 17, and a 19-year-old woman — all from neighboring Opelika — as well as a 21-year-old Auburn University student from Hilton Head, South Carolina, according to police.
The 16-year-old was flown to a hospital in Columbus, Georgia, with serious injuries. The other victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were taken to a hospital in Opelika, police said.
“Preliminarily, information has been obtained that an altercation occurred just prior to an exchange of gunfire that resulted in the injuries,” Auburn police said in the news release.
