Just before Anthony “Tony” Polito opened fire on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the disgruntled professor went to a post office and sent at least 22 letters to universities nationwide, authorities said Thursday.
Las Vegas Metro PD Sheriff Kevin McMahill said investigators already recovered one letter that was filled with an “unknown” white, powdery substance, which the other letters may also contain.
The sheriff said the letters were labeled with no return address, so he urged anyone working in academia to be cautious when opening any mail that fits that description this week.
The revelation came just after McMahill identified Polito, 67, as the gunman who killed three on Wednesday inside UNLV’s school of business—a program that, like other business schools in Nevada, had rejected him as a professor “numerous times.”
In a Thursday press conference, McMahill said investigators believe Polito was struggling financially and acted alone.
On Thursday night, cops confirmed the white powder was found to be harmless.
Word spread that Polito was the suspected shooter well before police’s official confirmation on Thursday afternoon. The Daily Beast obtained a 109-page document he’d compiled that was chock full of “positive reviews” from his former students.
That document, which was attached to the Polito’s LinkedIn profile until the page was taken down Tuesday morning, was titled “Evidence of Instructional Effectiveness.”
The glowing reviews were purportedly from the instructor’s former students at East Carolina University, where he was an associate business professor for more than 16 years. In the aftermath of Wednesday’s slayings, however, former students revealed that the 67-year-old occasionally spent more time raving about his trips to Las Vegas than he did teaching.
Commenting under a local news station’s article that ID’d the professor as the killer, multiple former students said their ex-professor frequented the Wynn Las Vegas hotel specifically.
“He was my professor and spent most of the time talking about his time in Vegas and staying at the Wynn,” wrote Mary Frances Stalls. Another student, Hanna Alexis Conrad, added, “As many have said, he had an odd fixation with Las Vegas and the Wynn hotel.”
In an online bio, the suspected gunman described himself as a “semi-retired university professor.” He described his “greatest gifts and takeaways” from his career in higher education as being “the many kind & positive comments students made regarding my instruction and disposition toward them.”
McMahill confirmed Thursday that the victims killed included members of faculty or staff, not students, who aren’t believed to have been targets.
Professor Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64, was identified by the Clark County Coroner’s Office as one of the victims, 8 News Now reported, adding that he died from a gunshot wound to his head. An online biography said he was a business professor.
Assistant Professor Patricia Navarro Velez, left, and Professor Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang, right, in official headshots for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Dr. Patricia Navarro, a 39-year-old assistant professor at the university, was also confirmed by the coroner to be a victim, dying from multiple gunshot wounds. The California All-Stars Las Vegas Cheer Gym shared a tribute to her on Tuesday afternoon.
“Our hearts are shattered as we share the devastating news of the loss of a beloved member of our Cali family in yesterday’s senseless shooting,” the organization said in a statement.
Some former students of Polito speculated that he was desperate to work closer to Las Vegas, writing that he was fixated on the city and spoke about it endlessly. Phone records reviewed by The Daily Beast showed that the suspect lived in a Las Vegas suburb at the time of the attack.
“I took his class when I was at East Carolina,” wrote Paul Whittington. “His class was among my least favorites. He was a poor instructor and had an odd fixation with Las Vegas. Spent more than half the class talking about all his trips.”
Whittington told the Associated Press that Polito appeared to be “obsessed” with student reviews about his performance at the end of each semester and didn’t take poor reviews lightly.
He added that the professor once quipped to his class that he’d remember the faces of students who gave him bad reviews and emphasized that he was sure who they were and where they sat, pointing at seats in the classroom.
“He always talked about the negative feedback he got,” Whittington said, according to the AP. “He didn’t get a lot of it, but there would always be one student every semester, or at least one student every class, that would give a negative review. And he fixated on those.”
Authorities said that shots first rang out from Beam Hall, where the university’s business school is housed, just before noon. The gunfire sent the campus into a panic, with a campus-wide lockdown initiated that McMahill said induced panic attacks from students.
The sheriff said Thursday that Polito was armed with a 9mm handgun, which he purchased legally last year, and 11 magazines. He added that officers recovered what they believe to be a “last will and testament”-style document from his apartment.
McMahill said that a fourth shooting victim, whose health had previously been reported as improving from a critical state, had their condition downgraded to “life threatening” again on Thursday.
The sheriff said Wednesday that officers got into a firefight with Polito and shot him dead, with some cops needing to be treated for minor injuries.
