Campus Alert Archive
UNLV

'Shots Fire' to 'Threat Neutralized': Five Alerts That Tracked a Gunman Across Two Buildings

NVactive shooteremergency notificationmedium confidence
Confirmed Threat

A 67-year-old professor who had been rejected for a position at UNLV opened fire in Beam Hall, killing three faculty members and injuring one. The RebelSAFE alert sequence began with a typo-laden initial message, escalated to confirm an active shooter with the phrase 'This is not a test,' expanded to a second building report at the Student Union, then shifted to a lengthy shelter-in-place as police evacuated buildings one at a time.

Alerts
5
Response
15 min
Killed
3
Injured
3
Institution
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Public R1 · NV
~31,000 studentsRebelSAFE Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

5 messages in sequence · 4 verified verbatim

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTTwitter/X
Verified verbatim@UNLV official Twitter/X post (verbatim), timestamp 11:53 AM PST December 6, 202399 chars
University Police responding to report of shots fire in BEH evacuate to a safe area, RUN-HIDE-FIGHT
Posted on @UNLV's official Twitter/X account at approximately 11:53 AM PST on December 6, 2023, paralleling the UNLV Rebel Alert SMS push
Typo: 'shots fire' instead of 'shots fired' is preserved verbatim — Fox 5 Vegas, Las Vegas Sun, and KTNV each quoted the same typo, indicating the SMS template carried the typo
Uses building abbreviation 'BEH' (Beam Hall, home of the Lee Business School), assuming recipient familiarity with campus codes
Combines evacuation directive with Run-Hide-Fight in a single message
No capitalization of building name suggests speed prioritized over formatting
UPDATETwitter/X+6 min
Verified verbatim@UNLV official Twitter/X post (verbatim)133 chars
UPDSouth - UNLV UPD Alert - UNLV University Police responding to confirmed active shooter in BEH. This is not a test. RUN-HIDE-FIGHT.
Posted verbatim by @UNLV on X/Twitter at 11:59 AM PST on December 6, 2023, six minutes after the first 'shots fire' alert
Escalation from 'report of shots fire' to 'confirmed active shooter'
'This is not a test' reflects institutional awareness of alert fatigue from regular drills
System prefix 'UPDSouth' visible, suggesting multi-campus dispatch routing (UNLV is operationally split into north and south sectors for UPD radio traffic)
Hyphenated RUN-HIDE-FIGHT format maintained from first alert
UPDATETwitter/X+27 min
Verified verbatim@UNLV official Twitter/X post (verbatim)154 chars
UPDSouth - UNLV UPD Alert - UNLV University Police responding to additional report of shots fired in the Student Union, evacuate the area, RUN-HIDE-FIGHT.
Posted verbatim on @UNLV's official Twitter/X account on December 6, 2023, after a secondary report at the Student Union
Reports shots at a second location (Student Union), expanding the perceived threat zone
The Student Union report may have been unrelated or a confusion in the chaotic aftermath
The shooter had already been killed by police by this time, yet this alert suggested ongoing danger
Demonstrates how multi-location reports complicate situational awareness during active events
UPDATESMS+1h 5m
Approximate reconstruction143 chars
UNLV UPD Alert: Continue to shelter in place. Police are evacuating buildings one at a time. Avoid the area around Beam Hall and Student Union.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

Shift from active threat language to methodical clearing operations
'Evacuating buildings one at a time' signals a systematic process that will take hours
Names both Beam Hall and Student Union as areas to avoid
Sent nearly 30 minutes after the suspect was confirmed deceased, but shelter remained in effect
UPDATESMS+7h 45m
Verified verbatimUNLV RebelSAFE Twitter/X156 chars
UNLV UPD Alert – The threat has been neutralized. Please stay away from the area of Beam Hall. Scene is still active. Shelter in place until further notice.
'Threat has been neutralized' is unusually direct language confirming a lethal force outcome
Partial all-clear: threat ended but scene remains active for investigation
Full shelter-in-place not lifted until 7:38 p.m., nearly eight hours after the shooting began
Maintains shelter directive despite threat elimination to preserve the crime scene
Context

Background

The UNLV shooting on December 6, 2023 illustrates two important trends in campus alert language. First, the typo ('shots fire') is a recurring phenomenon in crisis alerts composed under extreme stress, serving as an authenticity marker in the historical record. Second, the phrase 'This is not a test' represents institutions grappling with the unintended consequence of regular alert testing: students who have received dozens of test alerts may initially assume a real alert is another drill. The gunman, Anthony Polito, was a 67-year-old career professor who had applied for a position at UNLV and been rejected. He arrived on campus with a 9mm handgun and 11 loaded magazines. He was killed by campus police within minutes of the first shots, but the alert sequence continued for hours as buildings were cleared one at a time. The report of shots at the Student Union added confusion, as it expanded the perceived threat zone even after the shooter was already dead.
Analysis

Key Findings

Typos in crisis alerts ('shots fire') are recurring authenticity markers, not aberrations
'This is not a test' reflects institutional awareness of alert fatigue from regular testing
Two-stage confirmation pattern: 'report of shots' to 'confirmed active shooter'
Multi-location reports (Beam Hall and Student Union) created confusion even after the threat ended
Nearly eight hours elapsed between the shooting and full shelter-in-place lift despite the shooter dying within minutes
Outcome
Gunman Anthony Polito, 67, was killed in a shootout with University Police outside Beam Hall. Three UNLV faculty were killed: Patricia Navarro-Velez (39), an accounting professor; Cha Jan 'Jerry' Chang (64), an MIS professor; and Naoko Takemaru (69), an associate professor of Japanese Studies. A fourth faculty member, visiting professor Bot Rith (38), was critically wounded and was officially identified on September 10, 2024. Two responding officers also sustained minor injuries. Polito had applied for a UNLV professorship and was not hired; he was a former tenured associate professor at East Carolina University who resigned in 2017 and carried a 'target list' of former ECU colleagues, though none of his actual victims were on it. Police later said the shooter was nearly able to kill an officer before his gun jammed.
Provenance

Sources

  1. Social
    RebelSAFE Twitter/X Account
    twitter.com
  2. Source
    2023 University of Nevada, Las Vegas shooting, Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
  3. News
    Las Vegas Review-Journal coverage
  4. Source
    LVMPD December 6 Shooting Report
    lvmpd.com
Tags
active-shootertypo-in-alertthis-is-not-a-testrun-hide-fightalert-fatiguefaculty-targetedmulti-location-reportsextended-shelter-in-place2023
Added April 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion