Police Say Suspect Had Returned to Dorm
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
A Delaware State University freshman was arrested in his dorm yesterday and charged with attempted first-degree murder in a shooting that wounded two students from the District and sparked fears of another Virginia Tech incident.
Hours before classes resumed at the Dover campus, Loyer D. Braden, 18, of East Orange, N.J., was arrested at 3:30 a.m. and charged in the shooting early Friday of Shalita Middleton and Nathaniel Pugh III, both 17.
Middleton, a former Woodrow Wilson Senior High School cheerleader and a Delaware State freshman, was shot twice in the abdomen and remains hospitalized in serious condition. Pugh, a Dunbar Senior High School graduate and a freshman biology major at Delaware State, was shot once in the ankle.
Braden was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and a weapons violation, according to Capt. Lester Boney of the Dover Police Department.
A university spokesman said Braden apparently left the campus after the shooting and later returned.
"I question the young man's intelligence in coming back to campus this morning, if that's what he did," said the spokesman, Carlos Holmes. "Lord knows what was going through his brain. Maybe he thought he was scot-free."
When asked if it were possible that Braden was on campus all along, Holmes said, "Nope."
On Friday and Saturday, university officials limited access to campus -- although students with IDs could always get in -- because at that time "we didn't know who the shooter was, didn't know where the shooter was," Holmes said. "By Sunday, they knew who the shooter was, and they knew he wasn't on campus."
Holmes said police had not ruled out the possibility that others were involved in the shooting.
The shooting, which happened shortly before 1 a.m. Friday on the campus's pedestrian mall, was seen by many as the first test of a university's response to a gunman since a student killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech in April. Virginia Tech officials have been criticized for not alerting students more swiftly that an armed and dangerous person was at large.
Friday's gunfire shocked the Delaware State campus, and administrators quickly locked down the university as police searched for the gunman.
On Sunday, the campus was opened for parking for the NASCAR race taking place across the street; money from that goes to scholarships, Holmes said. Classes resumed yesterday.
While being taken yesterday to a justice of the peace, Braden said "I'm sorry" when reporters asked him questions, according to the Associated Press. When asked what he was sorry about, he replied, "She's in the hospital."
Braden was ordered held on a $75,000 secured bond.
Officers from several agencies -- including campus police, the state attorney general's office and federal agencies -- have been investigating the shootings, interviewing scores of witnesses. Holmes said authorities have not ruled out a "turf war," which some students described as a New Jersey-D.C. conflict, or a fight over a card game earlier in the week, which some students said had become an ongoing dispute. Some said the argument ignited again sometime after midnight; soon afterward, many students were awakened by the sound of gunfire.
Pugh's mother has said that her son did not know the person who shot him and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She said he had never been in a fight at the university.
Students have created a "Pray for Shalita!!!" page on Facebook.com for Middleton, whose nickname is "Cookie," praising her spirit, energy and beautiful smile.
Braden played basketball at a Catholic high school in New Jersey, according to media reports at the time.
The university has a zero-tolerance policy for certain violations, Holmes said, including having a weapon on campus.
"He was a freshman," Holmes said of Braden. "I don't think he's going to be a freshman anymore."
Staff writers Delphine Schrank and Daniel de Vise and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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