LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Weird, odd, and quirky are some of the adjectives that former East Carolina University students are using to describe their former professor, Anthony Polito. Police named the 67-year-old as the shooting suspect who killed three people and injured one at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Wednesday. He died after a shootout with police.
RELATED LINK: Two of three victims of UNLV shooting identified by coroner
Paul Whittington took Polito's Intro To Operations Management class at ECU during the Spring 2014 semester. He said Polito's class was popular because of his unorthodox methods.
"His class was relatively simple and easy. He didn't take attendance. You didn't really have to show up. There wasn't many tests or anything," Whittington explained. "It was a final exam at the end, maybe a couple of quizzes spread out throughout the semester, mostly toward the back end of the course, and that was it. I think the final was like 80% of your grade so as long as you passed it, you were good."
RELATED LINK: What we know about Anthony Polito, the deceased UNLV gunman
However, Whittington described Politio as being a "pretty weird guy".
"We spent the first four weeks of the 16-week class just talking about the syllabus. Most professors knocked that out in the first 30 minutes of a class," Whittington said. "Then after that, it was 100%, just nothing but conversations about Las Vegas, all the hotels that he stayed at, the restaurants that he frequented, what he liked to do out there, the places he shopped, and the airlines that he flew on. Everything was about Las Vegas from the moment we stopped talking about the syllabus until he was ready to start reviewing what was going to be on the final exam."
One thing that Whittington mentioned was Polito's habit of pointing out negative, anonymous reviews that were submitted by previous students.
"At the end of every semester, the university sends out a survey where you rate the professor and you rate the course. All that feedback is anonymous and the dean shares it with the professor," Whittington explained. "He kept a running log of every single negative thing that a student said about him. A lot of that negative feedback was shared with us in class. He would say things like 'I'm pretty sure I know who wrote this. It was written last semester and was a student that sat in that seat right there'. Then he would start trash-talking the type of person that student was."
RELATED LINK: Investigators find UNLV gunman's list of targets, will, eviction notice
Whittington said it was chilling reading the details about the UNLV shooting.
"You're always shocked when something like that hits that close to home. I was certainly surprised. Somebody told me that it was an ECU professor and I connected the dots immediately in my head and was like it had to be Tony Polito," Whittington said. "I don't think I ever thought man, he's capable of doing something like this. But you start to think if he's capable of it today, he was capable of it 10 years ago when I was in his class. It's scary to think about that in the aftermath of the tragedy in Las Vegas."
To see our full coverage, you can visit ktnv.com/unlvshooting.
