On Friday afternoon, Amy Bishop pulled out a gun at a biology faculty meeting and opened fire, killing three and wounding three of her University of Alabama–Huntsville colleagues. The shooting sent ripples through Huntsville, a bustling research center in northwest Alabama, and crippled a department with the loss of three of its 13 full-time faculty members.
Bishop has been charged with capital murder and three counts of attempted murder, the Huntsville Times reports. She is being held without bond at an area prison. The shooting claimed the lives of three biology professors: Maria Ragland Davis, Adriel Johnson, and Gopi Podila. Bishop, who was hired by UAH in 2003, was openly angry about having her tenure rejected by her colleagues in 2008, reports say.
In the meantime, the university community is left to pick up the pieces. All flags in the city were lowered to half-mast for the week. And the biology faculty members at UAH are anxiously following the conditions of their wounded colleagues who are in the hospital. Two are in critical condition.
"Right now," one biology professor tells the Huntsville Times, "we're just trying to find out how we can work best with the families and the ones still in the hospital."
All classes at UAH have been canceled for this week, and the school has set up counseling services for the UAH community.
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IlkizSgs7 of AL 5:21AM May 31, 2010
MikibFus2 of AL 10:23PM May 10, 2010
David Muir 1:26AM February 17, 2010