A US academic is suspected of killing the woman he lived with, then driving hours to the university where he worked and shooting a colleague dead, before dying of a self-inflicted wound.
Shannon Lamb, a social science professor at Delta State University in the state of Mississippi, shot himself after police located him and followed his vehicle.
He pulled his car over and fled into woodland near the town of Greenville.
Officers later heard a single gunshot and found Lamb's body, Cleveland, Mississippi police chief Charles Bingham told a late night news conference.
Cleveland is the town where Delta State University is located.
Police in the coastal town of Gautier, Mississippi were investigating the murder of a woman in Lamb's home when they got news of the campus shooting about 500 kilometres north.
The Biloxi Sun Herald reported that the woman lived with Lamb.
Delta State University sent out an alert urging students to stay inside and away from windows after an active shooter was spotted on campus.
It later confirmed that Ethan Schmidt, a professor of American history, had been killed in his office.
Lamb was among a long list of colleagues that Schmidt thanked in his 2014 book, Native Americans in the American Revolution.
Lamb received his doctorate from Delta State last year, according to a faculty profile posted on the university's website.
His areas of expertise include the geography of crime, social science education, economic geography and high-stakes testing.
He joined the university in 2009 and also received his undergraduate and master's degree from Delta State, a public university with more than 4000 students.
AFP
