Just as Bowie State University students, alumni, and faculty were enjoying a fun-filled weekend of homecoming activities, it was ruined by a shooting that injured two people.
On Saturday, local police responded to a shooting around 11:30 p.m. at Henry Circle, a large area of green grass at the Maryland HBCU campus. While the identity of the two people injured has not been revealed, early investigations have led authorities to believe that two 19-year-old men were the victims of the shooting.
While they were both taken to the hospital after the incident, doctors were treating non-life-threatening injuries, according to WBAL-TV.
This comes nearly a week after a shooting occurred on the campus of Morgan State University, an HBCU also located in the state of Maryland. With the shooting on their campus occurring just before homecoming was set to start, the university canceled most of the Homecoming events scheduled for the week, except the football game.
In a generous gesture, Bowie State leadership extended an invitation to Morgan State students who had their homecoming weekend canceled due to the shooting that occurred a week ago. They even offered currently enrolled Morgan State students tickets to the Bowie State football game on Saturday.
But in an unfortunate case for Bowie State and Morgan State students who planned on participating in the festivities, the Saturday night shooting cut it short.
Bowie State leadership canceled classes on Monday and made counseling available for students.
During a press conference on Sunday, Maj. Kenny Brown, assistant bureau chief of the Maryland State Police Criminal Enforcement Division, made it clear that there is no connection between the shootings that happened at the two HBCU campuses. He also revealed that the two victims shot are not students at Bowie State or Morgan State University.
He also revealed that investigators will continue to be on the Bowie State campus to investigate what happened on Saturday night.