Richland County Coroner Gary Watts has confirmed Raja A. Fayad as the victim of a murder-suicide at the University of South Carolina (USC) Thursday.

According to the State, Watts would not release the name of the shooter due to next-of-kin notification. Fayad, 45, was a graduate director and USC's head of applied physiology and an expert in colon cancer at the Arnold School of Public Health.

South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) spokesman Thom Berry also said police recovered a Hi-Point 9mm semi-automatic handgun at the scene, the State reported. He would not say it was the murder weapon, but that Sayad died from "multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body."

It is not yet clear how many rounds the gun held, but the one found at the Public Health building had no bullets in it. Berry indicated police would be following through on various search warrants spread throughout Columbia, S.C., but declined to be any more specific, the State reported.

Berry confirmed what had already been reported about the victim and the shooter, that they had some sort of relationship, but it appears the context of which is still not known.

Some students in the Public Health building thought it was a drill.

"I was on my way to my next class and I got on the elevator and a police officer asked me if I heard gunshots. I told him no and he said that there was a report that shots were fired. Five minutes later the fire alarm went off and we all went outside," Hayden Dunn told WLTX.

USC's first alert to the incident came at 1:15 p.m. Thursday and the campus was declared safe an hour later. When the lockdown was ordered, It did not take long to realize what was happening was not a drill.

"I'm happy that the Carolina Alert let us know that something happened," Dunn said, "but its frightening not knowing exactly what is going on."

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