DSU Shooting Suspect in Custody

Police made an arrest in the Delaware State University shootings.

DOVER, Del. -- Police had a suspect in custody Monday in the shooting of two students on the Delaware State University campus, authorities said.

Police Capt. Lester Boney did not release the suspect's name or say what charges the person would face.

"If we're getting a warrant for him, I'm comfortable we've got the right guy," he said.

One of the wounded students has been talking with police, officials said, but that student's mother said the 17-year-old freshman doesn't know who the gunman was or what triggered the shooting.

Nathaniel Pugh III, a freshman biology major, told his mother that he had gone to the Village Cafe, a campus dining hall that stays open until 3 a.m. He said he heard two gunshots about 1 a.m. and started running. A third shot caught him in the ankle, shattering two bones, said his mother, Michelle Blackwell, in an interview from Kent General Hospital in Dover.

"He didn't see who shot him, but there were several students gathered there on the campus who could have seen who shot him," Pugh's mother, Michelle Blackwell, told The Washington Post.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Period," she said.

Another wounded student, Shalita Middleton, 17, was being treated for abdominal wounds at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del. University spokesman Carlos Holmes said Middleton had not been questioned and "will not be questioned until we get clearance from the physicians."

According to Michelle Blackwell, mother of victim Nathaniel Pugh III, her son was an innocent bystander. He didn't know who shot him.

Does that mean that he doesn't know the individual at all?

Does that mean he didn't know who actually fired the shots?

Now with a suspect in custody, it may turn out that he does know the person who shot him, even if he was not the shooter's intended target and had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pugh and his mother, as well as DSU students and their parents, must be relieved at the news of an arrest.