More than 400 law enforcement personnel have been deployed as police search for the suspect in a shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island in which two students were killed, officials said.
The mayor of Providence told a news conference that eight others were critically injured while a ninth person was hurt by bullet fragments.
"We are a week and a half away from Christmas, and two people died today and another eight are in the hospital," Brett Smiley said.
"So please pray for those families," he added.
The Providence university remains in lockdown several hours after a suspect with a firearm entered a building where students were taking exams.
Streets around the campus were packed with emergency vehicles hours after the shooting and security was heightened around the city as law enforcement agencies continue their manhunt.
The suspect remains at large, officials said, as police worked with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to search streets and buildings around the campus to find the individual.
Watch: Providence Mayor says two people have died after shooting at Brown University
Providence Deputy Police Chief Timothy O'Hara said the suspect had not been identified.
A video of the suspect has since been released, with the individual described as a male possibly in his 30s and dressed in black.
Mr O'Hara said the suspect may have been wearing a mask.
He said officials had retrieved shell casings from the scene of the shooting, but that police were not prepared to release details.
Officials said the gunman escaped after shooting students in Brown's Barus and Holley engineering building, where outer doors had been unlocked while exams were taking place.
The university reported an incident at the building at 4:22pm (9:22pm Irish time).
"Lock doors, silence phones and stay hidden until further notice," it said in an initial emergency alert.
Officials said the shooter escaped after shooting people in the building, where the exams were being held at the time.
Video of person of interest in Brown shooting: pic.twitter.com/fjufQ3MTdC
— Providence Police (@ProvidenceRIPD) December 14, 2025
Brown University is on College Hill in Rhode Island's state capital near Boston.
The university, which has about 11,000 students, contains hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories.
"This is the day one hopes never happens and it has," Brown' University's President Christina Paxson told reporters, confirming all or nearly all of the victims were students.
As news of the shooting spread, the school told students to shelter in place.
Brown University student Chiang-Heng Chien told local TV station WJAR that he was working in a lab with three other students when he saw the text about the active shooter situation a block away.
They waited under desks for about two hours, he said.
Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee vowed that the shooter would be brought to justice.
"We're going to make sure that we catch the individual that brought so much suffering to so many people," he said.
The search for the suspect was complicated by crowds of holiday shoppers and thousands of people attending concerts and events on a weekend night, local officials told reporters.
Federal law enforcement and police from surrounding cities and towns were assisting in the search, officials said.
According to local news reports, venues across the city were bringing in extra security.
Police are scouring videos and calling for information from witnesses or others in their search for the suspect.
"Some tips have been coming in. We have been running them down," Mr O'Hara said.
"None of them have worked out for us yet," he added.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had been briefed on the situation, which he called "terrible".
"All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt," he added.
The shooting is the latest in a long line of school attacks in the US, where attempts to restrict easy access to firearms face political deadlock.
The Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more victims have been shot, has counted 389 of such incidents this year in the US.
The US had more than 500 mass shootings last year, according to the archive.
