Three college teachers shot dead by student

A failing student killed three of his teachers at a nursing school in Tucson, Arizona, yesterday, shooting one in her office and the other two in an examination hall in front of terrified students.

Robert Flores, 41, shot the first professor in a second-floor office, then walked calmly into the exam room on the fourth floor of the University of Arizona's School of Nursing and shot two more professors three times each.

One woman who was in the exam room, Mabel Alvarez-Thornhill, said the gunman told his victims: "Make your peace with God." About 30 students dived under their desks or scrambled to leave the room.

Another nursing student sitting the exam, said the gunman turned to the second professor after shooting the first and said: "You're just as responsible as she is."

According to university authorities, Flores had failed a paediatric nursing class and was struggling in a critical care class. As he carried out his shootings, he ordered the students taking the exam to leave.

Anu Nigam, who was standing outside the building, described how a woman student ran out shouting about a man with a gun. "She was just crying and saying, 'I know they're dead'." Other students came running out behind the woman, "literally falling on the ground trying to run away", she said.

When police rushed into the building, they found the victims and the gunman dead. The murdered teachers were later named as Robin Rogers, 50, Barbara Monroe, 45, and Cheryl McGaffic, 44.

A police dog aroused suspicion about a backpack found under the gunman's body and the nursing college and surrounding buildings were evacuated while it was examined by explosives experts. The police said they found materials consistent with explosive-making equipment in Flores's car.

Three hours after the shooting, the authorities gave the all-clear. "The campus is now safe and the shooting was an isolated incident," the university president Peter Likins said. "Grief is appropriate and fear is not."

Groups of students and staff at the school were herded on to shuttle buses and taken to the campus alumni building, where counsellors were on hand.