The person of interest who prompted a lockdown of the state’s third largest university posed no threat to the campus community, officials said this afternoon.
About 2 p.m., Kennesaw State officials received a call about a suspicious man on campus with a possible weapon and put the school on lockdown as a precaution, university spokeswoman Tammy DeMel told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an emailed statement.
According to an emergency alert on KSU’s website, the suspicious man was on the Campus Green, the center of the north Cobb County campus.
KSU biology major Carly D’Allen and computer science major Matthew Crowley said the Campus Green was full of students when the lockdown began. They did not see or hear anything suspicious, and they were unaware of any problem until a siren came on telling everybody to move inside.
At one point during the lockdown, political science and international affairs department chair Kerwin Swint said he could see police “crawling over the study center parking lot” from his office.
But by 3:30 p.m., the university lifted the lockdown and said the unidentified person of interest had no weapon.
“Police found the individual with a cell phone in his pocket and confirmed that he was not a threat and never posed a threat to the community,” officials said in a statement.
— Staff writers Haley Castillo, Janel Davis and Aaron Gould Sheinin contributed to this report.
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