Campus shooting suspect had killed brother

Police officers have revealed that more than 20 years ago, Amy Bishop killed her teenage brother with a shotgun at their Massachusetts home in a shooting that investigators concluded was an accident.

Bishop had just months left as a teacher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville when police said she opened fire with a handgun on Friday in a room filled with a dozen of her colleagues from the university's biology department.

Bishop, a rare woman suspected in a workplace shooting, was to leave after at the end of this term because she had been refused a permanent job.

Some said she was upset after being denied the job-for-life security afforded tenured academics, and the husband of one victim and one of Bishop's students said they were told the shooting stemmed from the school's refusal to grant her such status.

Authorities refused to discuss a motive while a school spokesman said the meeting had not been called to discuss tenure.

William Setzer, chairman of the UAH chemistry department, said Bishop was appealing against a decision made last year.

The three killed were Gopi K Podila, the chairman of the department of biological sSciences, and two other faculty members, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson. The wounded were still recovering in hospital yesterday.

Descriptions of Bishop from students and colleagues were mixed. Some saw a strange woman who had difficulty relating to her students, while others described a witty, intelligent teacher.

However, it was unclear how many of her colleagues and students knew about a more tragic part of her past. Both Mr Setzer and the university's police chief said they weren't aware of her brother's death until they were asked by reporters.

Bishop shot her brother, Seth, an 18-year-old accomplished violinist, in the chest in 1986, said the police in Massachusetts, where the shooting occurred.

The local district attorney's office released a 1987 report which concluded Seth Bishop had been killed by an "accidental discharge of a firearm".

Bishop told investigators she was trying to learn how to use a shotgun that her father had purchased for protection in the home after a break-in when it "went off" killing her brother.