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According to police, the suspect is not a student at the university, nor were four of the five injured.
A 19-year-old has been arrested in connection with a shooting on a Virginia university campus that wounded five people, one critically.
Police arrested Camron Harris of Henrico, Virginia, on Saturday after finding the suspect hiding in a dormitory closet.
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According to Chesterfield County Police, Harris is not a student at the university, nor were four of the five injured.
The shooting, just after 1:30am (5:30 GMT) on Saturday, triggered an hours-long campus-wide lockdown. The university lifted the lockdown hours later, at 8:21am (12:21 GMT).
All five of the wounded were taken to hospital, including one in critical condition, according to the university.
Authorities said the victims ranged in age from 17 to 23. One of them, a 20-year-old student, has since been released from the hospital.
The names of those wounded have not been released.
Police obtained eight felony warrants against Harris, including for malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
The authorities have not disclosed a possible motive.
Arthur Fridrich, the university’s former director of distance education, said: “For those that were shot, my heart bleeds. I hope that they all mend and somehow do not let this event define their lives.”
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The university said in an earlier statement that authorities were searching for multiple suspects, but police gave no additional information.
The shooting happened two days before the university’s autumn semester is due to start.
Virginia State University is a historically Black university in Ettrick, about 39 kilometres (24 miles) south of the state capital of Richmond.
It has about 5,700 students and was the first fully state-supported four-year college for Black Americans.
Gun violence at colleges and universities in the US is relatively common. The Gun Violence Archive, a national tracker, recorded 75 shootings at higher education institutions in 2025, with a total of 100 victims.
One of the most high-profile attacks in recent years was in Virginia, when a gunman fatally shot 32 people and wounded 17 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, also known as Virginia Tech, in 2007.
Earlier this year, a man opened fire at a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) group at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia, killing an instructor and wounding two others.
In a statement on social media, Governor Abigail Spanberger said she and her husband were “praying for a quick recovery for those who were shot this morning at Virginia State University, and our thoughts are with the VSU community”.
She also thanked first responders and law enforcement.