Luke Air Force Base shooting: Active shooter reported near Glendale; latest warning for airmen

Luke Air Force Base near Glendale, Arizona, reported an active shooter on Friday. The base is currently under lockdown. In a message for airmen and families, officials said that a shelter-in-place has been ordered. The public has been asked to avoid the area.

Glendale police stated that authorities are evacuating buildings out of an ‘overabundance of caution’. There is no word on injuries and the suspect yet.

Luke Air Force Base’s statement on active shooter

“Luke Air Force Base is responding to a reported active shooter incident on the installation. Personnel on base have been directed to shelter in place and follow guidance from first responders. Law enforcement and emergency personnel are actively responding. The safety of our Airmen, families, and community is our top priority. The public is asked to avoid the area and not spread unverified information. Additional information will be released as it becomes available.”

Where is Luke Air Force Base?

Luke Air Force Base is located in Maricopa County, Arizona, about 15 miles west of downtown Phoenix, near the city of Glendale. It sits in the Sonoran Desert and serves as a major US Air Force training base for F-35 fighter pilots. It is one of the largest training centers.

This comes a day after the suspect in the Brown University shooting and slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was identified as Claudio Neves Valente. The 48-year-old was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

He killed two students and wounded nine others at Brown University’s Providence campus on Saturday. MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed Monday night in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.

Valente, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a six-day search that spanned several New England states.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.