On a quiet, snowy Friday, November 1, 1991, the University of Iowa campus in Iowa City was shattered by a shocking act of violence. Among the victims that day was Robert Alan Smith, a 45-year-old White male and an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He had joined the university's faculty in 1989. The tragic events unfolded in the afternoon within the confines of Van Allen Hall, a place of academic pursuit that would become a scene of unimaginable horror.
The
perpetrator was identified as Gang Lu, a 28-year-old recent doctoral graduate from the university's physics and astronomy department. Lu was reportedly enraged after his dissertation was not nominated for a prestigious academic award. Armed with a. 38 caliber revolver, he entered a meeting of the theoretical space plasma physics research group. Inside, he opened fire, targeting those he held responsible for his perceived failure. Professor Smith was among the individuals shot during this initial attack.
Lu's rampage did not end there. After shooting the chairman of the department in his office on a different floor, he returned to the meeting room. Finding that Professor Smith had been wounded but was still alive, Lu shot him again, ensuring his death. Lu then proceeded to another building on campus, Jessup Hall, where he killed an associate vice president for academic affairs and seriously injured a student employee.
The attack, which lasted only a matter of minutes, claimed the lives of five people and left one person seriously injured. The suspect, Gang Lu, was later found in a room in Jessup Hall, where he had taken his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. As the perpetrator died at the scene, there were no subsequent arrests or ongoing searches for other suspects. The university community was left to mourn the sudden and tragic loss of colleagues, mentors, and friends in a senseless act of violence that reverberated far beyond the campus grounds.
