Three people were killed, and three others were wounded when a former student, 43-year-old Nigerian immigrant Peter Odighizuwa, opened fire in the school with a handgun.
[3] Odighizuwa returned to the school around 1 p.m. and proceeded to the offices of Dean Anthony Sutin and Professor Thomas Blackwell, where he opened fire with a .380 ACP semi-automatic handgun, killing both men.
According to Bridges, at the first sound of gunfire, he and fellow student Mikael Gross, unbeknownst to each other, ran to their vehicles to retrieve their personally-owned firearms[6] placed in their glove compartments.
[7] Bridges, a county sheriff's deputy from Asheville, North Carolina[8] retrieved his .357 Magnum pistol from beneath the driver's seat of his Chevrolet Tahoe.
[10] Odighizuwa then dropped his firearm and was subdued by several other unarmed students, including Ted Besen, Daniel Boyd, and Todd Ross.
[12] Besen, a Marine veteran and former police officer in Wilmington, North Carolina, engaged in a physical confrontation with Odighizuwa, and knocked him to the ground.
After three years of treatment and monitoring, in 2005, Odighizuwa was found mentally competent and pleaded guilty to the murders to avoid the death penalty.