An armed man opened fire early Thursday in a Florida State University library that was filled with hundreds of students studying for exams.

Three students were injured before police killed the gunman in a shootout, according to authorites.

FSU officials and police are calling the incident an "isolated incident," but are withholding many details about the event. It is unclear how the suspected gunman entered in Strozier Library on campus, less than a mile from downtown Tallahassee and the state Capitol.

"This person just for whatever reason produced a handgun and then began shooting students in the library," FSU Police Chief David Perry said to the Associated Press.

Students in the library just after midnight when the shooting began scrambled, trying to find cover among the book aisles and fortifying desks for protection.

"I ran for my life," Allison Kope, a freshman from Cocoa Beach, said. Kope was studying on the library's first floor. "I ran right out the backdoor. My laptop and everything is still in there. It was shock. It was just instinct. You don't think about anything else, you just go."

"It was a consecutive bop, bop, bop, bop, bop," freshman Nikolai Hernandez said, who was in his dorm room across from the library when the shots rang out. "It makes me definitely a little bit nervous. I was supposed to be in the library. I had a paper to do and I got a little bit lazy and decided not to do it."

Another student, senior Sarah Evans, said she was inside the library when she heard another male student say he had been shot. When she turned to him, she saw he was lying on the ground with blood spreading from his leg.

Two of the victims were taken to a nearby hospital, while the third victim was just grazed by a bullet and FSU officials said they were treated and released at the scene.