FORT COLLINS – Three people, including a Colorado State University student, were killed and one person was wounded Thursday in a pre-dawn shooting outside an apartment complex about a mile west of the university campus, police said. The shooting suspect was among those killed.
A motive for the 2 a.m. shooting in Fort Collins wasn’t known. University police alerted students and faculty via text and email to stay inside after shots were heard, and sounded the all-clear at 4:35 a.m.
A female CSU student was killed, and her relatives were notified, university police said in a statement. Her name wasn’t immediately released by the Larimer County Coroner’s Office.
The other three people involved in the shooting were not affiliated with CSU, a public university with more than 33,000 students located about 65 miles north of Denver. City police Sgt. Dean Cunningham said it appeared that the shooter was known by one of the victims and was among the dead.
Grief counselors tended to students and others at an on-campus student center.
“We are deeply saddened by this terrible loss to our campus community and will share more information as we have it,” the university said in an email to students and staff.
Yellow police tape cordoned off a parking area outside a gray apartment building in the City Park neighborhood, a residential area that abuts the university’s 590-acre campus. Many students and faculty live in the neighborhood.
Darren Rutz, a former CSU student who lives near the scene, told The Rocky Mountain Collegian he was awakened by a woman’s call for help, followed by gunfire. “It seemed like quite a few gunshots to me,” Rutz said.
