Del. school shooting suspect charged in court

updated 8:27 p.m. ET Sept. 24, 2007

DOVER, Del. - Police arrested an 18-year-old in the shooting of two students at Delaware State University, authorities said Monday. As they led him into a courthouse, he told reporters: “I’m sorry.”

Loyer D. Braden, arrested about 3:30 a.m. in his dorm room, was charged with attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment, as well as a gun charge, according to court documents.

A justice of the peace set bail for the East Orange, N.J., teenager at $75,000 and ordered him to stay away from the victims and Delaware State. Braden is a freshman at Delaware State, according to a man at Braden’s home in East Orange who identified himself only as a family member.

University officials, who had assured the campus community over the weekend that the gunman was not on campus, could not explain how or when Braden returned to his dorm room.

“I’m not clear on that matter,” Delaware State University Police Chief James Overton said. “I can’t get into that.”

Overton did say that students returning to campus for Monday classes were not subject to checks.

'I'm sorry'
Four Dover police officers escorted Braden to the court Monday afternoon with his hands cuffed and his legs shackled.

In response to reporters’ questions, he said softly: “I’m sorry.” Asked what he was sorry for, he replied only: “She’s in the hospital.”

One of the wounded students, Shalita Middleton, 17, was being treated for abdominal wounds at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del. University spokesman Carlos Holmes said Middleton had not been questioned and “will not be questioned until we get clearance from the physicians.”

The other wounded student has been talking with police, officials said, but that student’s mother said the 17-year-old freshman didn’t know who the gunman was or what triggered the shooting at the Village Cafe, a campus dining hall that stays open until 3 a.m.

Nathaniel Pugh III, a freshman biology major, told his mother he had left the cafe when he heard two gunshots about 1 a.m. and started running. A third shot caught him in the ankle, shattering two bones, said his mother, Michelle Blackwell, in an interview from Kent General Hospital in Dover.

“He didn’t see who shot him, but there were several students gathered there on the campus who could have seen who shot him,” Pugh’s mother, Michelle Blackwell, told The Washington Post.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Period,” she said.

Braden was also accused of firing at a third student, James Richmond, according to the documents describing the reckless endangerment charge. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Friday.

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