By Dan Hayes, News Editor
news.inkwell@gmail.com
On Saturday February 24th Kaleel Clarke was shot on Savannah State University’s campus near its University Commons. According to the Savannah State, Clarke was not a student of the University.
Around 2:25 pm Savannah State Police received a call about a possible shooting on campus, upon arriving on the scene they found Clarke suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. Mr. Clarke was taken to Memorial University Medical Center, where he later died. The campus remained on lockdown until 4:45 pm.
The suspect in the shooting has been arrested and identified as Philip Burke. Mr. Burke was also not a student of the University.
SSU police Chief James Barnwell credits the identification of the suspect to new enhancements of campus surveillance systems and utilization of the new campus safety app, LiveSafe.
Update on Suspicious Person
The individual arrested February 19th on the Armstrong campus has been identified as Andre Malik Trimble. Trimble has been charged with two counts of criminal trespassing and two counts of loitering or prowling.
He was charged with two counts of each charge because Trimble is believed to be the same individual spotted on campus February 15th. According to the GSU Police Department, Trimble has “had several arrests for various charges.”
GSU Police first received a call of a suspicious person around 11 pm, officers responded to the scene but were unable to locate an individual matching the description provided by the complainant. Approximately 25 minutes later campus police received another call of someone trying to enter a residence in Compass Point. The description of the individual was identical to that of the suspicious person, so an Eagle Alert was generated for the campus community.
About a hour and a half later the police received a tip that someone matching the description in the Eagle Alert was seen in residential Parking Lot 2. Officers responded and took the individual into custody.
The investigation found that Trimble was walking around the area of Compass Point. It does not appear that he entered any other buildings on campus.
