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University Of Toronto Campus On Lockdown After Security Guard Spots Man With Rifle

By Rahul Srinivas
Published on: 03:35 PST, Jun 13, 2016

The campus of the University of Toronto has been placed on lockdown after a suspicious man, reportedly armed with a rifle, was seen on the campus, the Independent reports.

According to another report by CBC News, the emergency task force department of Toronto police has arrested one man from the campus following the lockdown. It remains unclear if the suspicious man and the arrested individual are the same person.

According to initial reports, the suspicious man was first spotted by a security guard at the university. The suspicious man was reportedly seen wearing a mask inside an under-construction building within the campus.

The official Twitter account for the University of Toronto has been continuously tweeting updates about the incident and has asked that no one enter any of the listed buildings and to remain in place till authorities declare an “all clear.”

We have embedded the tweets below, starting with the first one. It all started with this tweet.

The post was followed up by a series of additional tweets.

Authorities add that even though they have one man in custody, the search operation is not over yet.

This is a developing news story. Check back later for more updates

Update: The University has now confirmed that the lockdown has been suspended.

The Toronto police have also confirmed the same.

An official statement was released by the President of the University of Toronto, Meric Gertler which read;

On behalf of the university, I want to thank all the members of the community – students, faculty and staff – who responded calmly and quickly to this event on our St.George campus. And I also want to extend our thanks to the Toronto Police Service and our Campus Community Police for their fast action and for the care they took to ensure the safety of everyone in the area. I think I speak for many of us when I say that this has been a distressing day, but I am very relieved at the outcome.

The report of the lockdown on the University of Toronto campus came just a day after the Orlando shootings that left more than 50 people dead in the United States – making it the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since the September 11 attacks of 2001. This had initially raised concerns of a possible terrorism angle to the incident. Officials are however yet to reveal the identity of the person they said they had arrested from the campus.

[Image via Yinan Chen – www.goodfreephotos.com (gallery, image), Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons]

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