Thompson Rivers University is always alert to potential dangers such as one that left two men dead and another wounded at a U.S. university Tuesday, a spokeswoman says.

“We would deal with any incident that develops involving faculty, staff, students or administrators. The whole gamut,” said Nancy Twynam, TRU’s chief student affairs officer.

Twynam responded to questions about staff and student safety at TRU after an Ohio State University employee killed a co-worker and wounded another before killing himself early Tuesday morning.

She said TRU has teams on campus that assess threats ranging from day-to-day problems involving students, to aggressive and potentially life threatening encounters among staff.

Teams include a case management group that deals with cases involving students on campus and a threat assessment team trained to deal with staff and students.

Team members look for low- or high-level threats. Twynam said low-level threats include odd or aggressive behaviour that is out of character for an individual.

A high-level threat occurs when a person says he or she intends to hurt themselves or someone else, she said.

“It would be something like ‘I hate you. I’m going to kill you. I have a gun and I’m going to go home and get it. I know where you live,’” she said.

If an incident does occur, the university has a critical response team that includes medical personnel and counsellors ready to step in.

Fortunately, TRU has avoided incidents like the one at Ohio State and other institutions across North America. Twynam said the hope is the university’s luck holds out.

“We hate to talk about things like that. We don’t want to jinx anything,” she said.

Ohio State campus policy said they believe the gunman, who has been identified as Nathaniel Brown, 51, a custodian, arrived at the university at about 3 a.m. carrying two handguns. He may have been disgruntled about a poor work evaluation.

Police said he suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was pronounced dead on arrival at Ohio State University Medical Centre.

Larry Wallington, 48, a building services manager, was pronounced dead at the scene. Henry Butler, 60, an operations shift leader, was shot and wounded. Police said he is in stable condition at the medical centre.

No students were involved in the shooting and classes were held as scheduled.