After nine years at San Diego State University, engineering student Frederick Martin Davidson submitted his master's thesis and was called upon to defend it before a faculty committee.
Just after the meeting began, Davidson opened fire on his faculty adviser and two other professors, shooting more than 20 rounds and even stopping once to reload, police and witnesses said.All three men were killed in the shooting Thursday afternoon in a third-floor laboratory-classroom in a mechanical engineering building on the sprawling campus. Three students, the only other people in the room, were not injured.
Davidson, 36, put down the gun and surrendered to campus police when they arrived after hearing the gunshots, authorities said. He was booked for investigation of murder and was being held at the San Diego County Jail.
The shooting happened on the next-to-last day of summer classes at the hilltop campus 10 miles from the downtown convention center where Bob Dole accepted the Republican Party's presidential nomination.
A motive in the shooting was not immediately clear. Davidson had already co-authored several journal articles with Chen Liang, his faculty adviser, and appeared to have a promising future. McDonnell Douglas was funding the men's research.
Besides Liang, a 32-year-old assistant professor of mechanical engineering, the dead were identified as: D. Preston Lowrey III, 44, associate professor of mechanical engineering; and Constantinos Lyrintzis, 36, associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics.