What We Know About the Brown University Shooting

The authorities are still searching for the gunman who killed two people on the Rhode Island campus.

A gunman burst into a classroom at Brown University in Rhode Island on Saturday, killing two people and wounding nine others before fleeing the campus.

The search for the attacker dragged into Monday after the authorities said they would release a person of interest who had been detained earlier.

The Ivy League university lifted a lockdown of its campus in Providence, R.I., early Sunday, but said it had canceled all remaining classes and exams for the rest of the fall semester.

Here’s what to know about the attack:

What happened?

The shooting occurred Saturday afternoon in a room in the Barus and Holley building, where students were attending a final exam review session for an economics class, Christina Paxson, the Brown University president, said on Sunday. Other students inside the building were taking final exams or seeking quiet spots to study.

The shooting was first reported about 4 p.m. An alert sent by the university told students and faculty members to lock their doors, silence their phones and stay hidden because of reports of an active shooter. Many students hid in dorms, while others took shelter in the basement of a popular tea shop.

Owen Fick, a junior at Brown, described seeing heavily armed police officers in protective gear running down the street, before he rushed to a dorm room to shelter in place. “There were a lot of ambulances, a lot of cop cars, fire trucks,” he said. “They just had a lot of gurneys.”

Students spent the night locked in classrooms, libraries and dorms. Annelise Mages, a first-year pre-med student, was studying for her chemistry final in the Sciences Library when the shooting began.

She and dozens of other students protected themselves by lowering shades and barricading doors, using whiteboards and chairs. Ms. Mages estimated that it was two or three hours later when police officers broke down the barricades and the group was moved into the building’s basement for another four to five hours.

Who are the victims?

The two students killed in the shootings were identified as MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook.

Mr. Umurzokov, 18, from Midlothian, Va., was a naturalized American citizen, who arrived in 2011 from Uzbekistan. His sisters, Rukhsora and Samara, said that he chose Brown because of its financial aid offer and that he had worked at a Wawa over the summer to raise money for a computer.

He had initially come to the country to receive treatment for a medical condition, Chiari malformation, in which spinal fluid puts pressure on the brain and spinal cord, according to his sisters and his friend, Maddox Johnson.

Mr. Umurzokov was interested in becoming a neurosurgeon to help children the way doctors had once helped him, Mr. Johnson said.

Ms. Cook, 19, a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Ala., was an accomplished piano player who was fluent in French and was vice president of the college Republican Club.

A high school classmate, Catherine Johnson, described Ms. Cook as “so smart, so studious and focused.”

She had summer jobs at an ice-cream parlor and as an assistant at an organization that runs summer study programs around the world.

Who is the gunman?

The authorities are still searching for the person who attacked the campus. They said on Sunday night that they would release a person of interest they had detained earlier in the day.

Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said at a news conference on Sunday night that investigators did not find enough evidence to charge the detained person in connection with the attack.

Law enforcement officials have not named any other suspects so far, or mentioned potential motives. The police released a video of the suspect in the hopes that someone might recognize him.

Mayor Brett Smiley of Providence said officials had no way of knowing if the attacker was still in the city.

There was also a lack of video footage from the campus to assist the investigation. “There just weren’t a lot of cameras in that Brown building,” Peter F. Neronha, the attorney general of Rhode Island, said.

How have officials responded?

President Trump said on social media that he had been briefed on the shooting and that the F.B.I. was on the scene.

Gov. Dan McKee of Rhode Island described the shooting as “an unthinkable nightmare” in a brief interview. “This is something that’s going to impact families and people’s lives for a lifetime,” he said.

Mr. Smiley, the mayor of Providence, described meeting with a wounded student at the hospital who said an active shooter drill in high school helped them in the moment. “We shouldn’t have to do active shooter drills, but it helped,” the mayor said, “and the reason it helped, and the reason we do these drills, is because it’s so damn frequent.”

Mr. Neronha, the attorney general of Rhode Island, acknowledged that the investigation was well into its second day.

“It can never be too fast, particularly for the victims and their families and parents, but sometimes, investigations take a little bit of time,” he said late Sunday. “Sometimes it’s not as easy as having a photograph of a person that we can just give to you to help us find that person.”

“Obviously we have a murderer out there, frankly, and so we’re not going to give away the game plan,” he said.

Dana Goldstein Qasim Nauman and Victor Mather contributed reporting.

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