The victims of the mass shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Wednesday were comprised of three faculty members who were killed, and one faculty member who was injured.
According to the Clark County coroner’s office, one of the victims was identified as Cha Jan Chang, 64, – known as “Jerry” – a UNLV business professor who lived in Henderson, Nevada. Chang was an assistant professor at UNLV from 2001 to 2007 and had been an associate professor since 2007, receiving both his masters and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. UNLV President Keith Whitfield said in a statement on X: “Dr. Chang was a longtime educator of management information systems, spending more than 20 years of his academic career teaching a generation of UNLV Lee Business School students.”
A second victim, Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, was an assistant professor in accounting at UNLV and lived in Las Vegas, according to the coroner. Velez had a Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida, with her UNLV biography stating: “Navarro’s current research focuses on cybersecurity disclosures and assurance, internal control weakness disclosure, and data analytics”. Whitfield said on X: “Dr. Navarro-Velez, an assistant professor of accounting, had devoted her career to educating the next generation of accountants. She joined UNLV nearly 5 years ago as a professor of accounting, where she focused on teaching accounting information systems.”
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill identified the suspect as Anthony Polito. The suspect — who had applied for a college professorship at UNLV, but was not hired, according to sources — was killed in a shootout with responding officers about 10 minutes after shots were first reported at UNLV’s Beam Hall.
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