ORANGEBURG, S.C. — A suspect was arrested early Saturday and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a student outside a dormitory at South Carolina State University, law enforcement officials said.
Justin Bernard Singleton, 19, of Charleston, was arrested just after midnight at the parking lot of an apartment complex in Orangeburg, where the campus is located, said Thom Berry, a public information officer with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
He was charged with murder in the death of 20-year-old Brandon Robinson, according to a news release from law enforcement. Singleton was being held at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center.
Robinson died Friday afternoon after he was shot outside Hugine Suites.
Authorities initially said they were looking for four men who had left campus. Berry said there was no ongoing safety concern for the community but declined to say whether there was still an active manhunt.
“At this time, we believe we have the individual who fired the shot,” Berry told The Associated Press early Saturday.
Authorities decided to lock down the campus so that whoever was responsible for the shooting could not return, University Police Chief Mernard Clarkson said Friday. The lockdown was lifted Friday evening.
Clarkson said police haven’t figured out what led to the shooting.
The shooting shocked the entire campus, university President Thomas Elzey said. Grief counselors were being brought in to talk to students and staff.
“We, again, are extraordinarily sad about this. He was a very nice young man. And it hurts. It hurts us all,” Elzey said.
Elzey said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley offered any help the school needed.
South Carolina State also was the site of a fatal shooting in 2011, when police said three men met on campus for a drug deal. A student, 22-year-old Jonathan Bailey, was killed.
Friday’s fatal shooting happened three days after authorities said a Purdue University student shot and stabbed a fellow student to death in a classroom.
South Carolina State University is a historically black university with about 3,200 students in Orangeburg, about 40 miles south of Columbia.
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