Anthony Polito: Ex-students reveal UNLV shooter discussed his 'obsession' with Las Vegas in class

Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers’ discretion advised.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: According to former students and one of his graduate assistants, the man behind the shooting spree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas was a former professor in North Carolina who spent much of his time in the classroom talking about his obsession with Las Vegas and had "peculiar" ways of working.

Anthony Polito, 67, killed three people and injured a fourth on Wednesday at UNLV, where he had applied for a teaching job in 2020 but was not hired, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the case.

Professor Polito mailed letters to nearly two dozen university personnel before the shooting, with a harmless white powder substance discovered in one of the envelopes.

The letters' contents, as well as the reason for the shooting, remain unknown. Polito was known for his eccentricities and obsession with Las Vegas, as per NBC.

UNLV shooter 'was obsessed with Las Vegas'

Polito was a tenured associate professor in the department of marketing and supply chain management at ECU from 2001 to 2017, according to a university spokesperson.

Paul Whittington, 33, of Garner, North Carolina, said he learned Thursday from a colleague that the alleged UNLV gunman was a former ECU professor.

Whittington remarked, “My immediate reaction was it had to be Tony Polito. I didn’t say that because I thought he was capable of anything like that. I didn’t say that because I thought that’s the kind of person that he was. I said that because my entire time in his class — he was obsessed with Las Vegas.”

Whittington stated that Polito was his professor during the 2014 spring semester in an Introduction to Operations Management class.

Following the first month of the class, which was primarily about the syllabus, the remainder of the class was primarily about Polito's time in the desert and under the neon lights in Las Vegas.

Whittington further added, “I think he went at the end of every semester, so at least twice a year. He would talk about all the hotels that he stayed in. All the restaurants that he would go to. All the clubs and shopping places that he would go to. Maybe some friends that he had made, people he went to visit when he was out there.”

“That was the class. If you can imagine a college class where you just relive someone’s vacation, like, that was kind of his class. It was all we talked about from the start of the class to the end of it,” he went on to say.

Polito's class was the "most unconventional" Whittington had ever had. Tressa Grottini, 32, another former student, said Polito would crack jokes in class and "talk about going to Vegas all the time" when he taught her marketing around 2013.

Grottini remarked, “He would give us students, like, pointers on when to go, areas to stay, things like that.”

She described Polito as "really even-tempered" and said she was "speechless" when he was identified as the gunman. “If you met him, you would never think that would be something that he would have done,” he further added.

Anthony Polito's peculiar office style led to frequent redoing of tasks

Polito was an "eccentric" but "super nice guy" at ECU who was strict about the organization and his email system, according to TJ Strickland, who worked for Polito as a graduate assistant for six months in the fall of 2011.

He asserted, “He was peculiar about how things in his office should be. If it wasn’t right, then we’re completely redoing it.”

Strickland, 37, said he was frequently assigned the task of printing assignments and tests for Polito's students. Strickland stated that if the task was not completed perfectly, he would have to start over.

“If something was not stapled in the correct order, we’re going to throw it all away and reprint it and re-staple it,” he added.

According to Strickland, there was a shooting scare on campus in 2011, prompting a lockdown, but the weapon threat was an umbrella, not a gun. Polito gave Strickland an umbrella as a joke as a graduation gift. Strickland said he was "absolutely blown away" to learn Polito was behind the Las Vegas shooting spree.

He went on to say, “He had a strange personality but was always super nice. You really don’t know people sometimes and what they have going on. This is the perfect example of that.”

ECU was accused of personal interactions with students

A woman who took an ECU online course in 2012 felt preyed upon by her professor, Polito, who allegedly pursued her in an unsettling manner. Polito assisted her with her résumé and landed her an internship.

Polito, according to the woman, would try to contact her every day for nearly the entire semester via emails and texting. Polito also purchased gifts for her and invited her to Las Vegas before the end of the semester.

Polito was well-liked on campus, so the woman never thought to report him. Polito never inappropriately touched her or acted out after she ended communication with him. Polito is accused of committing a mass shooting, which surprised the woman. 

Polito, a popular ECU instructor, was known for his interactions with students, which he primarily accomplished through email and a personal website.

Polito had received positive reviews on ratemyprofessors.com and had compiled years of anonymous comments from student surveys before the shooting. Polito, on the other hand, would actively seek out negative feedback and discuss it in class.

Whittington wonders if Polito had a violent nature as a professor, questioning whether he was capable of such behavior ten years ago.