2 killed in Michigan community college shooting
AP - Friday, April 10, 2009 5:24:09 PM
By DAVID RUNK

Two students were killed Friday in an apparent murder-suicide that prompted a lockdown at a community college west of Detroit, police said.

The bodies were discovered inside a Henry Ford Community College building after police responded to an emergency call of an assault and shortly afterward reports of a shot being fired on campus, said Dearborn Deputy Police Chief Gregg Brighton.

As officers entered the MacKenzie Fine Arts Center, they heard another gunshot, Brighton said.

Officers then found the bodies of Asia McGowan, 20, of Ecorse, and Anthony Powell, 28, of Detroit, police said. Powell apparently used a shotgun to kill

McGowan and then turned the gun on himself, police said.

They took at least one class together -- a theater course that had met earlier in the day, Brighton said.

The 17,000-student commuter school sent alerts through an e-mail and cell phone system and locked down the campus, said Marjorie Swan, Henry Ford's vice president/controller.

"Nothing like this has ever occurred on campus," Swan said.

The lockdown later was lifted but classes for the rest of the day were canceled, as were Saturday's classes.

The shooting happened on Good Friday, and the campus wasn't as busy as usual, based on how full the parking lots were, Swan said.

"Our hearts go out to the family and the friends of the young woman who lost her life today," she said.

Christian Plonka, a 12-year-old who attends a theater program in the building, said he heard "one gunshot, and I saw someone getting pulled back into the room they were in."

Plonka and other students in the program ran into a parking lot at the adjacent University of Michigan-Dearborn campus, where they waited until police allowed them to leave.

Earlier Friday, a 19-year-old gunman wounded three people at a vocational training college in Athens, Greece, before killing himself, authorities said.

The shootings came a week after a man walked into the American Civic Association center in Binghamton, N.Y., and killed 14 people before turning the gun on himself.