POLICE in Athens, Georgia, were last night hunting a 57-year-old professor of business studies from the state’s leading university after three people were shot and killed at a local theatre.

George Zinkhan, a marketing specialist at the University of Georgia, is suspected of opening fire with more than one weapon outside the Town and Gown Players theatre, close to the university campus.

Three others were said to be injured. It was not immediately clear if the victims were university students who had been targeted or were struck in a random assault.

Zinkhan was described as a white male with a dark beard.

He was last seen wearing a sports shirt and shorts. Police said he may have been carrying “multiple weapons”.

Police Major Mike Shockley said officers were called to the theatre after midday and found three dead. Three others were injured, “possibly by ricocheting bullets”.

One witness to the incident claimed that one of the gunman’s victims was a male named Tom Tanner. The gun-man allegedly shot him in the front and again in the back.

“At 22 you’re not supposed to watch people die,” said John Hardy, the father of a witness to the shootings.

Deploying measures that were introduced after the mass murders at Virginia Tech in 2007, university authorities immediately sent text alerts to 25,000 students, warning them that Zinkhan was suspected of the shootings.

“His track record is impeccable as far as his teaching credentials,” said university spokesman Pete Konenkamp.

“He’s a respected professor on campus.” Although America has become tragically used to shooting rampages by school and university students, local sources could think of no recent precedent for a rampage by a professor.

The worst campus shooting remains the Virginia Tech massacre when Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 fellow students and injured many more before turning a gun on himself.

In a statement the University of Georgia president, Michael Adams, said the university community was shocked and saddened.

“Our first thoughts are for safety of the university community and for prompt apprehension of the person responsible,” said Adams. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of all those who have been affected.”

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