Students and staff at the campus in Alpine, Texas were advised to shelter-in-place Monday afternoon after what police described as reports of a “suspicious person.”
By Travis Bubenik
Officials at Sul Ross State University in Alpine issued an all-clear Monday evening a few hours after the campus community was told to shelter in place because of reports of a “suspicious person” on campus.
“Happy to report an ‘all clear,’” the university’s president Pete Gallego wrote on Twitter just after 5 p.m.
Earlier Monday afternoon, Gallego said on Twitter that he had asked for students and staff on campus to shelter in place while police investigated “a report of a possible shooter.” But Gallego said at the time that police had found “nothing out of the ordinary.”
A university police department spokesperson told Marfa Public Radio that police worked to clear every building on campus as a precaution, but that there had been “no shots fired, nothing like that.”
The university itself later confirmed in a post on Twitter that there was “no active shooter on campus.”
The university police department declined to comment further on the suspicious person report or where it had originated from.
In a Facebook post, the Big Bend Sentinel reported that local police had received a call around 1:45 p.m. Monday about a man on the campus “with something sticking out of his bag, which the sheriff's office believes may be a baseball bat.”
In announcing the all clear, Gallego thanked police for their response and said the university follows “the ‘see something, say something’ rule” and that “we value the safety of every student, staff, member & faculty member.”
