Suspect in two Mississippi slayings is dead

CLEVELAND, Miss. – Authorities say the suspect in the fatal shooting of his domestic partner and a university professor in Mississippi is dead.

Delta State University police Chief Lynn Buford told the Associated Press late Monday that Greenville police were following 45-year-old Shannon Lamb when Lamb pulled over, jumped out of his car and ran.

Buford said police heard one gunshot and found Lamb with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. They took Lamb to the hospital in Greenville, where Buford said he was pronounced dead.

Police said Lamb fatally shot the woman he lived with on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and also fatally shot history professor Ethan Schmidt on the Delta State University campus in Cleveland, Mississippi, on Monday. The woman was identified as 41-year-old Amy Prentiss.

Officers in the two cities said they had not uncovered a motive for either slaying.

Lamb received a doctorate in education from Delta State University in the spring, according to his resume posted on the university’s website. He started working there in 2009 and taught geography and education classes, and volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, according to the resume.

Delta State President Bill LaForge said Lamb was teaching two online classes this semester.

The 3,500-student university in Cleveland is in Mississippi’s flat, agricultural region near the Arkansas state line. It was first put on lockdown mid-morning amid reports of an active shooter. Everyone on campus was told to take shelter, away from windows.

The slain professor directed the first-year seminar program and specialized in Native American and colonial history, said Don Allan Mitchell, an English professor at the school, who called him “a gentleman in every sense of the word.”

“Dr. Ethan Schmidt was a terrific family man, a good friend, a true son of Peabody, Kansas, and his beloved Emporia State University,” he said.

One of his history professors at Emporia State University described him as one of the “brightest students” she’d ever taught.

“He was a super competent human being. He was president of his fraternity, in student government. He was an absolutely delightful student,” said Karen Manners Smith.