UNC Charlotte student sacrificed life, saved others

The body of a University of North Carolina at Charlotte student who was killed confronting a gunman will receive a police escort back to his hometown on Thursday. Riley Howell, a 21-year-old from Waynesville, N.C., charged and tackled a shooter who opened fire in his classroom on the UNC Charlotte campus on Tuesday. He knocked the assailant down and bought enough time for the first police officer to enter the classroom and capture the suspect, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney. Howell and another student, Ellis R. Parlier, 19, were killed, and four of their classmates were injured. The suspect, Trystan Andrew Terrell, a 22-year-old former student at the school, is due to appear in court Thursday afternoon.

The gunman had a lot of ammunition, Putney said, and there was no indication he would have stopped if Howell hadn’t charged him, adding, “His sacrifice saved lives.”

Thousands of students and others attended a campus vigil on Wednesday night for the victims.