An alert citizen recognized the Michigan State University shooting suspect and helped police locate where he was shortly after police released his photo, officials said Tuesday in a news conference.
Chris Rozman, MSU Police and Public Safety interim deputy chief, said that police determined that they had a picture of the suspect from surveillance video and disseminated that quickly to the public.
"It was shortly after we released it that he was recognized by an alert citizen," Rozman said. "The time frame was pretty quick after we released it."
"We commend the community and the citizen that called that in. And that was exactly what we were trying to achieve by releasing that picture, was to generate immediate tips for this person that was mobile that we had no idea where he was at that point," Rozman said.
Police named 43-year-old Anthony McRae, who had no known affiliation to the university and was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, as the suspect. There is no known motive at this time, police said.