CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia - A shooting on the campus of the University of Virginia (UVA) in the United States late on Sunday left three people dead and two wounded, university police said in a tweet, adding that the suspect was still at large and “armed and dangerous”.

The university police identified a student, Christopher Darnell Jones, as the suspect.

UVA’s athletics website listed Jones as a one-time member of its football team. He was described as wearing a “burgundy jacket, blue jeans and red shoes”, and may have been driving a black SUV, according to the authorities.

It was not immediately clear if the victims were students.

University police warned that Jones was “armed and dangerous”. They said several law enforcement agencies were helping with the search for Jones, and that the Virginia state police had deployed helicopters as part of the effort.

An e-mail sent to the student body by the university’s vice-president recommended that all students seek safety and follow shelter-in-place commands, as the situation remained active.

“This is a traumatic incident for everyone in our community, and we have cancelled classes for today,” UVA president Jim Ryan said in a statement.

Ms Eva Surovell, a senior at the university and the editor-in-chief of The Cavalier Daily, the campus newspaper, told NBC News in Washington that students were taking the news seriously. “Everyone is awake, everyone is sheltering in place, calling family, checking in, making sure they’re OK,” she said. “It’s certainly sombre.” 

The shooting is the latest in a wave of gun violence on US college and high school campuses in recent years.

The bloodshed has fuelled the debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the US, where the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.

Police in Idaho were investigating a separate incident on Monday, in which four students were found dead in a home near another university campus, believed to be “the victims of homicide”. REUTERS, AFP