Student held in campus shooting

A Delaware State University freshman was arrested in his dorm Monday and charged with attempted first-degree murder in a shooting that wounded two students from the District of Columbia.

Hours before classes resumed at the Dover campus, Loyer D. Braden, 18, of East Orange, N.J., was arrested at 3:30 a.m. and charged in the shooting early Friday of Shalita Middleton and Nathaniel Pugh III, both 17.

Middleton, a Delaware State freshman, was shot twice in the abdomen and remains hospitalized in serious condition. Pugh, a freshman biology major at Delaware State, was shot once in the ankle.

Braden was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment and a weapons violation, according to Capt. Lester Boney of the Dover Police Department.

A university spokesman said Braden apparently left the campus after the shooting and later returned. “I question the young man’s intelligence in coming back to campus this morning, if that’s what he did,” said the spokesman, Carlos Holmes.

The shooting, which happened shortly before 1 a.m. Friday on the campus’s pedestrian mall, was seen by many as the first test of a university’s response to a gunman since a student killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech in April. Virginia Tech officials have been criticized for not alerting students more swiftly that an armed and dangerous person was at large.

Friday’s gunfire shocked the Delaware State campus, and administrators quickly locked down the university as police searched for the gunman.

While being taken Monday to a justice of the peace, Braden said “I’m sorry” when reporters asked him questions, according to the Associated Press. When asked what he was sorry about, he replied, “She’s in the hospital.”