A top Texas university has marked the start of a new academic year not with the eager bustle of students to and from classes but tragic reports of a dorm-room shooting.
Rice University issued a brief shelter-in-place notice Monday afternoon as campus police attended the Jones College residential hall room of junior Andrea Rodriguez Avila, whose family had requested a welfare check after she’d been out of contact and failed to attend classes.
Avila was discovered dead of a gunshot wound at the scene, alongside the body of a man who appeared to have died from a second, self-inflicted shot. He has not been named but is apparently unaffiliated with the university and may have been from Florida.