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By Jeff Martin

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The man killed in a homecoming weekend shooting at Tuskegee University has been identified as La’Tavion Johnson, 18, of Troy, Alabama, the local coroner said Monday.

The shooting injured 16 other people on Sunday, including a dozen by gunfire, authorities said. An arrest was announced a few hours later. Most of the injured were students, but not Johnson.

Jaquez Myrick, 25, of Montgomery, was arrested as he left the scene of the campus shooting and was found with a handgun equipped with a machine gun conversion device, the agency said. Alabama law enforcement. Myrick faces a federal charge of possessing a machine gun, the agency said in a statement. He did not accuse him of using the weapon in the shooting and did not provide additional details.

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The agency did not say whether Myrick was a student at the historically black university, where the shooting erupted as the school’s 100th Homecoming Week was drawing to a close.

It was not immediately known whether Myrick had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail, according to online booking records.

Twelve people were shot and four others suffered injuries unrelated to the gunfire, the state agency said. Several were being treated at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika and Baptist South Hospital in Montgomery, the university said in a statement.

Their conditions were not immediately released, but Macon County Coroner Hal Bentley said he understood at least one of the injured people was in critical condition.

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The FBI joined the investigation and said it was seeking information from the public, as well as any video witnesses. He created an online site for people to upload videos. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was also involved in the investigation, a local prosecutor said.

Tuskegee University canceled classes Monday and said grief counselors would be available in the university’s chapel to help students.

The shooting shook the entire university community, said Amare’ Hardee, a senior from Tallahassee, Fla., who is president of the student government association.

“This senseless act of violence has affected each of us, directly or indirectly,” he said Sunday morning at the graduation ceremony.

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Sunday’s shooting comes a little more than a year after four people were injured in a shooting at a Tuskegee University student housing complex. Two campus visitors were shot and two students were injured as they tried to leave the scene of what campus officials described as an “unsanctioned party” in September 2023, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

About 3,000 students are enrolled at the university located about 40 miles east of Montgomery, Alabama’s capital.

The university was the first historically black college to be designated a registered national landmark in 1966. It was also designated a national historic site in 1974, according to the school’s website.

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