NAU "Rampage Shooting" Apparently Not

I completely missed this tragedy.  From Oct. 9, 2015 AFP:

Los Angeles:  One person was killed and three others wounded in a shooting at an Arizona university early on Friday before police captured the gunman, university officials said.

The deadly shooting at Northern Arizona University (NAU) comes just over a week after the October 1 shooting rampage at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, in which a 26-year-old gunman shot dead nine people, then committed suicide.

The first emergency calls came through to police at 1:20 am Friday, when most NAU students would have been in bed at the university campus in the city of Flagstaff.

The motive for the shooting -- just the latest at colleges and universities in the United States -- was not immediately clear and the identity of the shooter and the victims was not immediately known.

But there's another side to the story.  From Nov. 20, 2015 Arizona Republic:

Northern Arizona University shooting suspect Steven Jones told police he was being charged by other students when he fired shots, killing one student and wounding three others, according to reports released Friday by the NAU police.

Jones, 18, claimed he and two friends were first attacked and beaten outside an apartment complex in the Oct. 9 incident and then chased to his car by another group of students who shouted obscenities and threatened to kill them.

But the surviving victims and other witnesses told varying stories that corroborated some of Jones' statements and contradicted others.

Jones, who wept during police interviews, claimed he got his Glock pistol from the car and told the pursuers, who were then surrounding his friends, that he had a gun. He said he shot two of the attackers, again saying they would kill him, when they charged him.

Colin Brough, 20, was pronounced dead at the scene. Nicholas Piring, 20, was the second student shot.

One of the friends who was with Jones corroborated the initial fight and that they ran from their attackers. He told police that Jones pointed the gun and told two men to get to the ground, but one lunged at him and was shot twice. Then he shot the other student, he said.

Jones has been indicted, but it sounds like he has at least a plausible argument for self-defense.

UPDATE: The story gets more interesting.  From Nov. 30, 2015 Arizona Daily Sun:

Accused killer Steven Jones was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he shot four fellow Northern Arizona University students, killing one.

But all four of the victims had alcohol, drugs or both in their systems on the night of the fatal shooting.

According to a new section of the police report released by NAU Police Department Monday, Arizona Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory technicians found no alcohol or drugs in blood recovered from Jones, 18, after he shot Colin Brough, Nicholas Prato, Nicholas Piring and Kyle Zienteck, all 20 years old, in what he characterized as an act of self-defense in the early morning hours of Oct. 9.

The same police report cited lab results that listed Prato’s blood alcohol content at 0.92 percent, Zientek’s blood alcohol content at 0.181 percent and Piring’s blood alcohol content at 0.208 percent. All three readings were above the 0.08 percent blood alcohol content used to determine whether a person is driving under the influence, although, as 20-year-olds, having any alcohol in their systems would be illegal. The lab tests also detected cannabis in Prato and Zienteck’s blood. Piring’s drug screening results were not included in the report.

Jones' claim looks more and more believable.