GOLDSBORO, N.C. (AP) – As students in North Carolina return to class, authorities planned to continue searching for a 20-year-old former community college student accused of fatally shooting a campus print shop director he used to work under.
Wayne Community College was placed on lockdown after the Monday morning shooting, but students were expected to return to classes Tuesday as law enforcements searched for Kenneth Morgan Stancil III. Authorities are pursuing him on an open count of murder, Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce said.
According to authorities and school officials, Stancil entered a large building on campus around 8 a.m. Monday with a rifle and went to the third-floor print shop, perhaps using a back staircase so he would go unnoticed. Stancil’s former work-study boss, Ron Lane, was killed in the print shop.
Wayne County sheriff’s Maj. Tom Effler said at a news conference that employees were able to identify Stancil since he had been a student.
Police were using helicopters and dogs to search for him. Authorities weren’t sure how Stancil left campus and they have not released a motive for the shooting. It’s believed he is still in North Carolina.
Authorities have described Stancil as a white man, about 5-foot-11, with a goatee and a tattoo around his left eye and on his neck.
First-year student Joniece Simmons, 19, said she was sitting on a bench outside the learning center when two officers with rifles and a third with a drawn handgun ran toward the building, shouting for students to take cover in a safe place. She and others ran inside to the cafeteria and locked the door.
Though they were urged to stay silent, some students still wanted to talk. “I was like ‘hush, it’s serious.’ I was crying,” Simmons said.
Nearby, the private Wayne County Day School – with about 300 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade – also was on lockdown, said Melissa Watkins, a volunteer parent receptionist at the school.
“We saw 10 to 11 cruisers go by all at once,” she said. “We knew something was going on; we just didn’t know what or where.”
Sheriff’s deputies blocked the driveway to the white mobile home listed as the home Stancil shared with his mother and two younger brothers.
A next-door neighbor on the road lined with brick ranch homes, Barbara Williams, said Stancil’s grandparents lived on the other side of the mobile home, where they operated an assisted living home. A sign in the front yard said “Stancil Family Care Home.” An elderly man with a cane who came to the front door declined comment to an Associated Press reporter.
Williams said Stancil once helped her late husband when he fell out of his bed.
“He came over here and picked him right up and put him back on the bed,” Williams said. “I’ve never had no problems with those kids. … It just surprises me.”