Student Kills 4, Then Himself at Iowa Campus : Crime: The gunman, a native of China, was upset about not receiving an academic honor. Two other persons were wounded in the shootings.

A student upset about not getting an academic honor shot four persons to death Friday at the University of Iowa before fatally shooting himself, a school official said. The dead included faculty members and the student who had won the honor.

Two others were critically wounded, authorities said.

The gunman was identified as Gang Lu, a graduate student in physics from China, Ann Rhodes, vice president of university affairs, said. He had filed a complaint with the school’s academic affairs office because his dissertation was not nominated for an academic award, she said.

Lu shot three members of the school’s physics and astronomy departments and another graduate student from China in one classroom, then went to the administration building and shot an associate vice president for academic affairs and a staff member, Rhodes said.

Rhodes said that Lu apparently had decided ahead of time whom he was going to shoot.

“It was not accidental,” she said. “It was not random.”

Two persons were hospitalized in critical condition, Rhodes said.

The gunman shot four people at Van Allen Hall, which houses the physics department, then went to Jessup Hall, the administration building, and shot two more people before killing himself, Rhodes said. The gunman was found in Jessup Hall about 10 minutes after the last shootings.

The rampage lasted about 10 minutes, police said.

Iowa City Police Chief R. J. Winkelhake said that police recovered a .38-caliber revolver. Police found the gunman alive, but with fatal head wounds, he said.

Scott Wollenweber, a graduate student, was conducting a review session Friday afternoon for astronomy students in Van Allen Hall.

“It scares the hell out of me,” Wollenweber said. “God, I was in there the whole time. One of my students said they heard shots out here but they didn’t know what it was. They just heard four or five (of) what sounded like shots.”

Mark Lawrence, a graduate student in geography, was attending a seminar in Jessup Hall when he heard a loud noise.

“A very short time later, a cop really burst into the room and simply tells us, ‘Get on the floor, turn off the lights, close the door,’ and then vanishes,” Lawrence said. “We have no idea what’s going on.”

The shooting occurred less than three weeks after George Jo Hennard drove his truck through the front window of a cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., and fatally wounded 23 people before killing himself. It was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

And last week, rumors of an impending mass murder spread across at least six college campuses in the Northeast, prompting officials at some schools to call meetings to reassure students.

University of Iowa President Hunter Rawlings, whose office is in Jessup Hall, was on his way to Ohio for the Iowa-Ohio State football game when the shootings occurred. Rhodes said he was returning to Iowa City.

“He expresses his sincere sympathy to the families,” she said. “This is a tragic occurrence.”

Rhodes said that the school was bringing in a team of psychologists to assist administrators and employees who had witnessed the shootings.

Late Friday evening, many students gathered at bars close to campus. Conversation stopped when television stations broke into regular programming with live updates on the shootings.