WSU Prof. shot during exam

Police Chief Benny Napoleon identified the victim as Andrzej Olbrot, a 52-year-old engineering professor who died at a hospital shortly after the shooting about 7 p.m.

The suspect - identified by Napoleon only as a man in his 40s - remained at large late yesterday.

The roughly 24 students in the graduate engineering class were not injured, Napoleon told Detroit radio station WWJ.

"Clearly it did not appear to be a random act - it appeared to be one where the professor was a target of the shooting," Napoleon said.

Said Napoleon of the witnesses: "You can't imagine what these people must have thought. ... A lot of these students are very shaken, very distraught."

Investigators were trying to pinpoint a possible motive in the shooting and the suspect's possible relationship to the professor, Detroit police spokesperson Octaveious Miles said. It was not immediately clear whether the suspect was one of the victim's students.

"Certainly there are all kinds of possibilities, but if he was a disgruntled student they (witnesses) certainly would have recognized him as such," Napoleon said.

Napoleon said the gunman walked into the "typical college classroom" through one of its two entrances "and just fired" with a long rifle the chief described as commonly used in target shooting.

After the initial gunfire, the assailant reloaded and fired again at the professor before tucking the gun in a sack and walking from the classroom, Napoleon said.

Dallas Schneider, chief of Wayne State's police department, said the gunman shot the professor at least twice, including once after the victim fell wounded.

Miles could not immediately specify how many shots were fired or how many bullets struck the professor, though Miles said the victim was wounded "several times."

Schneider described the class in which the shooting occurred as small, with witnesses unable to offer "no accurate description of the gunman."

"We don't know who the assailant is," Schneider said.

12-11-98