UNLV Shooting Suspect Identified, SWAT Team Searches Apartment
The suspect behind the shooting on Las Vegas college campus on Wednesday has been identified.
KABC-TV reported that local law enforcement had identified Anthony Polito, 67, as the man behind the attack at the University of Nevada Las Vegas that killed three people and wounded a fourth.
According to law enforcement, Polito was a professor who previously worked at colleges in North Carolina and Georgia and had unsuccessfully applied for a position at UNLV.
Polito was killed at the scene by campus police detectives within minutes of his opening fire.
Many aspects of the case still remain unresolved, and it remains unclear what role, if any, his rejection from a job at the university had played in his decision to slaughter innocents.
However, law enforcement has established that all those killed or injured in the shooting were faculty or staff rather than students.
Investigators are currently searching both his apartment in the city of Henderson, Nevada, as well as his phone and professional writings for further clues about his plan and the motivations behind it.
“At approximately 7:20 p.m., officers from LVMPD and HPD performed a search of the suspect’s apartment on the 300 block of Arroyo Grande Boulevard in Henderson,” KVVU-TV reported.
“It was a massive joint law enforcement operation from SWAT, LVMPD officers and Henderson officers,” the outlet continued. “What was found inside the apartment we do not know at this time.”
The suspect is said to have had an interest in the Zodiac Killer, claiming on his personal website to have successfully decrypted some of the killer’s secret messages, KABC reported.
He also had an active page on LinkedIn, where he described himself as a “semi-retired university professor” who resided in Las Vegas.
Polito listed his past employment as being an Associate Professor at East Carolina University between 2001 and 2017.
His profile lists his academic credentials, including a PhD in philosophy from the University of Georgia and a Master’s in Business Administration from Duke University in North Carolina.
“The greatest gifts and takeaways I possess from my many years within higher education are the many kind & positive comments students made regarding my instruction and disposition toward them,” he wrote on his profile.
ABC has been able to verify a LinkedIn page and a website that is believed to have been operated by Tony Polito. ABC reports that he is the deceased gunman of the UNLV shooting.
We’ll have the latest on Channel 13 at 11 p.m. and on https://t.co/5PzWVcXBEB pic.twitter.com/iGLF10UQ2G
— KTNV | Channel 13 News Las Vegas (@KTNV) December 7, 2023
His profile has since been memorialized, in what LinkedIn describes as a “tribute to Tony Polito’s professional legacy.”
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