Murder-Suicide Shocks N.C. State

Lili Wang, 31, was gunned down by fellow College of Engineering student Richard Anderson, 49, about 5:15 p.m. as she played tennis near Carmichael Gym, authorities said.

Anderson apparently turned the gun on himself after shooting Wang, said N.C. State Campus Police Chief Tom Younce.

A total of about five shots were fired, according to student accounts and preliminary police reports.

An N.C. State campus police officer who was jump-starting a student's car in the parking lot adjacent to the courts raced to the scene when the shots were fired. Anderson and Wang were both dead upon the officer's arrival. Though other individuals were on the tennis courts at the time of the shooting, nobody else was injured, Younce said.

Alex Moritz, a junior business major at N.C. State, was across the street from the scene when the shots rang out. "I was packing and cleaning my room when I heard shots. I thought it was a car backfiring, but then I heard more shots."

Though the shooting occurred during the university's Fall Break, many students were in the vicinity when the shots were fired. Students just back from the N.C. State vs. UNC-Chapel Hill football game in Chapel Hill were milling around the parking lot adjacent to the courts when the incident transpired.

After the first shot was fired, students piled into cars and fled the site en masse, officials said.

N.C. State freshman Patrick Blackley retrieved his car moments before the shooting. When Blackley returned to the lot around 9 p.m., he found his parking spot cordoned off with police tape.

Still wearing his Wolfpack gear from the game earlier that day, Blackley looked on as the campus police and officers from the State Bureau of Investigation examined the scene. "You see this type of stuff on the news all the time," he said. "It's different when you see it and it's right there."

Younce said that as officers combed the site for evidence they recovered the weapon -- a 10 mm glock semi-automatic -- and a suicide note outlining Anderson's intentions. The note, with Anderson's signature, was found about 100 feet from his body on a hill near his parked car.

It indicated that Anderson and Wang had a domestic relationship, Younce said, though he would not say whether the two were dating. "We do want to emphasize that this was a domestic dispute and there is no reason to suspect this sort of thing will spill out into the rest of the campus."

Younce said that he does not anticipate making any major changes to campus security because this was likely an isolated incident but that there is always room to improve campus security.

"This is really unfortunate," Younce said. "This is something we can use as reason to re-examine campus security.

N.C. State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox issued a statement Sunday stressing that safety is one of the university's top priorities.

But Blackley said he is not particularly concerned for his safety since the shooting was of a domestic nature, adding that other students are not likely to be overly fearful either. "If it was a boyfriend-girlfriend thing, I am a little less worried than if it was random."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.