UNLV active shooter was former college professor, sources say

LAS VEGAS () — The suspect in the shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, that left three people dead and one seriously injured, was a former professor who recently applied for a job at the university, sources told Nexstar’s .

The gunman was killed in a shootout with two detectives, police said Wednesday.

The 67-year-old man lived in a Henderson, Nevada, apartment, which police searched following the shooting.

The suspected shooter’s name, according to sources, was Tony Polito. He had recently applied for a job at UNLV, but was turned down, sources said.

An unnamed official confirmed to the Associated Press that Polito previously taught at East Carolina University. His LinkedIn page states he worked there between 2001 and 2017.

According to Roseman University of Health Sciences in Henderson, Polito also worked there as a contracted employee for the Master of Business Administration program from October 2018 to June 2022.

“During this period, he taught only two courses, Healthcare Operations Management, in July 2020 via Zoom and in October 2020 in-person. His contract was terminated on June 30, 2022, following the University’s discontinuation of the MBA program,” said Jason Roth, vice president of communications and partnerships.

On LinkedIn, Polito wrote, “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.”

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Polito also had a personal website where he posted some of his writing, including pieces titled “What Really Happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370” and “Final Eighteen Letters of the Zodiac Killer’s 408 Cipher Solved … and his Identity Revealed.”

In one 15-page thesis, Polito takes credit for decoding 18 characters, which he claimed identified the Zodiac Killer, the famous serial killer in California who used a code of symbols to communicate with police in the 1960s.

“Just so you won’t initially write off my solution as that of a total crackpot, let me first say that I have been a member of MENSA for 35 years,” he wrote in his introduction. He also said he was so interested in cryptography that he applied for the CIA, NSA, and the DIA, but was turned down.

Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Wednesday night that officials had identified the suspect but were not releasing his name publicly, pending notification of next of kin. Officials also declined to describe a suspected motive in press briefings Wednesday.

The gunman opened fire at about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday on the fourth floor of the building that houses UNLV’s Lee Business School and then went to several other floors before he was killed in a shootout with two university police detectives outside the building, UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia said.

Authorities gave the all-clear about 40 minutes after the first report of an active shooter.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many of the school’s 30,000 students were on campus at the time, but McMahill said students had been gathered outside the building to eat and play games. If police hadn’t killed the attacker, “countless additional lives” could have been lost, he said.

The Associated Press and Nexstar’s Addy Bink contributed to this report.