WASHINGTON: A Saudi student shot when a gunman opened fire in a US college classroom was on Friday recovering in hospital.
Officials from the Saudi Embassy in Washington confirmed that Rami Al-Ramadan was among victims of the shooting incident at the University of North Carolina, in Charlotte, which left two students dead and four injured.
Embassy staff are now closely monitoring the welfare of Al-Ramadan, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
Police investigating Tuesday’s shooting are still baffled as to the motive for the attack by 22-year-old suspect Tristyn Andrew Terrell.
Terrell had been a student at the university but withdrew before the end of this semester, officials said. He did not attend his first court appearance on Thursday to have two counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder and other charges read to him. Terrell will remain in jail at least until his bond hearing scheduled for May 15, according to The Associated Press.
In a statement the Saudi Embassy said: “In line with the directions of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to take care of all Saudi citizens, the embassy in Washington, as soon as it learned about the incident, contacted the Saudi citizen (Al-Ramadan) at the hospital to check up on him and facilitate all procedures related to his treatment.”
The embassy stressed its ongoing concern over the safety of Saudis in the US, and said round-the-clock assistance was available through emergency contact numbers which can be found on the Kingdom’s official websites for the Saudi Embassy and its consulate in Washington.
The shooting prompted a lockdown at the university and caused widespread panic across the campus as students scrambled to take shelter.
University campus police chief, Jeff Baker, said police officers assembling nearby for a concert rushed to the scene where they arrested the gunman in the classroom where the shots had been fired.
The university has more than 26,500 students and 3,000 staff and is located northeast of the city center in a residential area.
The deadliest mass shooting on a US college campus took place at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, in April 2007, when a student killed 32 people, then himself, according to Reuters.
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