Professor who faced Michigan State shooter recalls students' pleas | USA TODAY

Marco Díaz-Muñoz, 64, was reviewing a lesson for class when he found himself face to face with Anthony McRae, the masked gunman behind Michigan State University's latest school shooting.

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Normally dressed professionally and with purpose, the assistant professor’s navy button-down shirt was hanging open, haphazardly thrown back on, and his belt was missing — both taken off for wound care, though as he recalls, only his belt was used.

Díaz-Muñoz, 64, had just experienced the worst and yet all too common reality of American education — that a person can enter a place of learning and decide to end the lives of those inside, seemingly on a whim.

On Monday night, in Room 114 of Michigan State University’s Berkey Hall, where Díaz-Muñoz had been reviewing a lesson on treasure routes and piracy in the Caribbean as part of his Cuban cultural identity class, he’d found himself face to face with the masked gunman behind Michigan's latest school shooting.

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