An Oberlin shooting has left a beloved college professor and a 47-year-old woman dead in Ohio, after police found both victims with multiple gunshot wounds inside a home on South Pleasant Street on Wednesday morning, October 28, 2026. Oberlin College later identified one of the victims as Pipo Nguyen-Duy, 64, a longtime professor of studio art and photography who had taught at the college since 1998, while police took a 31-year-old Oregon man, Daniel Jones, into custody nearby.
The deaths, discovered during a welfare check at the family residence, prompted a shelter-in-place order on the Oberlin campus on Wednesday morning, road closures around two connected scenes, and a large response from Oberlin police and Lorain County law enforcement. By Wednesday afternoon, police had classified the case as a homicide, said there was no ongoing threat to the public, and said formal charges against Jones were pending. Investigators had not publicly detailed a motive or the sequence of events inside the house.
According to the account in the Oberlin Police Department's October 28 media release, as reported by the Lorain Daily, the morning began at approximately 8:57 a.m., when officers went to the Oberlin College Conservatory parking lot at 77 East College Street to assist Oberlin firefighters with a vehicle that was smoking and possibly on fire. Officers then tried to locate the registered owner of the vehicle to check on his welfare.
Police located Jones in the 200 block of Shipherd Circle at approximately 10:19 a.m. and took him into custody without incident, the release states. About nine minutes later, officers carried out a welfare check at the family's residence at 33 South Pleasant Street, where they discovered the two deceased people. The male victim was found on the first floor of the residence and the female victim on the second floor, and both had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.
The discovery set off a wide police operation. Several streets were blocked off as Oberlin police and Lorain County law enforcement personnel investigated two locations connected to the case, and Oberlin police requested a shelter-in-place order on Wednesday morning. The college later confirmed that the order was lifted after police confirmed there was no danger to campus or the community.
By Wednesday afternoon, the picture given to the public was still limited to the core facts. The police release classified the incident as a homicide and listed charges as pending. City officials described the incident as domestic in nature and said the suspect had been detained. No weapon, no alleged sequence of events inside the house, and no motive had been publicly detailed, and investigators had not said when formal charges would be filed.
Nguyen-Duy was far more than a name on a faculty list. Born in Hue, Vietnam, in 1962, he left Vietnam for the United States in 1975 at the age of 13 as a boat person and political refugee, growing up within about 30 kilometres of the demilitarised zone, where he later said he heard gunfire every day of his early life. As a teenager in Vietnam he competed on the national table tennis team, and he later spent time living as a Buddhist monk in northern India before turning to art.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1983, then moved to New York City, where he worked as a bartender and later as a nightclub manager in the East Village in the 1980s, meeting figures such as musician Don Cherry and artist Keith Haring. His interests then turned decisively to photography, and he earned a Master of Arts in Photography and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.
His career brought residencies at Monet's Garden in Giverny through the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Artists Fellowship, at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, and in Light Work's artist-in-residence programme. His work has been exhibited and collected in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America, and he was represented by galleries in Los Angeles and New York. Among his honours were a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2011, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, an En Foco grant, a Professional Development Grant from the College Art Association, a fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission, a B. Wade and Jane B. White Fellowship in the Humanities at Oberlin, and multiple Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council.
At Oberlin, he served as a professor of studio art and photography and chaired the Studio Art Department, teaching generations of students in the visual arts over nearly three decades. His 2025 solo exhibition, "Assimilation", at ClampArt in New York, and his "East of Eden" series, shown in New York, Sharjah and elsewhere, were among the most recent chapters of a working life that moved between Vietnam, the United States and the wider world.
It is worth being precise about what is confirmed and what is not, because early reporting on a case like this often moves faster than official statements. Confirmed by the police account: two people, a 64-year-old man and a 47-year-old woman, were found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in a South Pleasant Street home on Wednesday morning; a 31-year-old man from Ashland, Oregon, Daniel Jones, was taken into custody without incident shortly before the discovery; the incident has been classified as a homicide; and police say there is no ongoing threat to the public.
Confirmed by Oberlin College: the 64-year-old victim was Professor Pipo Nguyen-Duy, who had taught at Oberlin since 1998, and counselling and other support services are being made available to students, faculty and staff. Not confirmed in the police release: the name of the second victim, any formal charge against Jones, any motive, and any account of what happened inside the house before officers arrived.
Some reports have identified the second victim as Nguyen-Duy's wife, Trần Nam Phong, 47, and have identified Jones as the couple's son. Those identifications come from secondary reporting, not from the police release quoted in local coverage, which did not name either victim. This article therefore treats the relationship details as reported, not as police-confirmed, until an official statement or charging document settles them.
Oberlin College President Ambar, in a message to campus reported on Wednesday afternoon, said: "Pipo was beloved. During his years at Oberlin, he touched all of us through his passion for photography." The college also confirmed that Oberlin police had requested Wednesday morning's shelter-in-place order, which was lifted after police confirmed there was no danger to campus or the community, and that counselling and support services were being made available.
The tone of the campus reaction was grief rather than speculation. Colleagues, students and friends described a teacher whose passion for photography shaped the studio art programme, and whose own journey, from a child hearing gunfire near the demilitarised zone to a Guggenheim Fellow exhibiting on three continents, had become part of how students understood his work. No statement from the victims' family had been publicly reported by Wednesday afternoon, and police had not announced a news conference.
The wider context is a familiar and painful one for American college towns: a violent death close to campus, a morning of uncertainty while a shelter-in-place order is in force, and then a long wait for charges and a motive. Oberlin, a small city in Lorain County, about 35 miles south-west of Cleveland, is a place where the college and the town are deeply intertwined, and the deaths on South Pleasant Street, a short walk from campus, were felt in both.
The case matters first because two lives were taken, and because one of them belonged to a teacher who had shaped Oberlin's art programme for 28 years. It matters second because of what it reveals about how such cases unfold in public: a smoking vehicle, a welfare check, a custody arrest and a homicide classification can all be confirmed within hours, while the questions that matter most to a community, why it happened and what charge will follow, can take days.
It also matters as a test of restraint in reporting. In the first hours after a double homicide, rumour fills every gap left by an official statement, and the difference between a police-confirmed fact and a secondary report can be lost. Keeping that distinction visible, as this article does for the second victim's identity and for Jones's reported relationship to the victims, is not pedantry; it is how a community avoids carrying a false version of events into the courtroom and into memory.
The next formal step is a charging decision. Police listed charges as pending in their October 28 release, so prosecutors in Lorain County will decide what, if anything, Jones is charged with, and an initial court appearance would follow. That filing, when it comes, should settle the second victim's identity, the reported family relationship, and the alleged facts in a way that early reporting cannot.
Investigators will also continue processing two scenes, the residence on South Pleasant Street and the Conservatory parking lot area where the morning began, and will work to establish a timeline for the hours before the welfare check. Oberlin College is expected to announce memorial arrangements and further support for students and faculty, and the community will be watching for a police update on motive and on whether any further arrests are expected. Police have said there is no ongoing threat, and no further suspect has been named.
Pipo Nguyen-Duy, 64, was a professor of studio art and photography at Oberlin College, where he had taught since 1998 and chaired the Studio Art Department. Born in Hue, Vietnam, in 1962, he came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 and won a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2011.
Police found two people dead with multiple gunshot wounds inside a home on South Pleasant Street during a welfare check on Wednesday morning, minutes after taking Daniel Jones, 31, of Ashland, Oregon, into custody nearby. Police classified the incident as a homicide and said charges were pending.
Daniel Jones, 31, of Ashland, Oregon, is the man police took into custody without incident at about 10:19 a.m. on October 28, shortly before the bodies were found. Some reports identify him as the couple's son, but that relationship has not been confirmed in the police release, and no formal charge had been announced by Wednesday afternoon.
No. City officials described the incident as domestic in nature, but investigators had not publicly detailed a motive or the events leading up to the deaths. Police said there was no ongoing threat to the public.
Prosecutors will decide on formal charges, which should confirm the victims' identities and the alleged facts. Investigators continue to process the scenes, and Oberlin College has made counselling and support services available to students, faculty and staff.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: Elizabeth, New Jersey shooting leaves one dead and six injured; Florida A&M homecoming shooting: 15-year-old charged as an adult; Powder letters to Congress: Illinois man charged in election-week hoax case.
Note: the featured image is an illustration of a police scene in a small Ohio college town, not a photograph of the Oberlin residence.
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