The University of Richmond planned to reopen this morning under heightened security after school authorities locked down the campus yesterday in response to a suspicious, possibly armed man.

"This is as locked down as we can get," school spokesman Brian Eckert said at one point during the emergency response that stilled the 300-acre campus and brought dozens of law-enforcement officers to UR.

Efforts to locate a man who first was spotted wearing a brown windbreaker with the word "sheriff" on the back, a navy T-shirt and disguised in a fake gray beard were unsuccessful yesterday and last night, the school said.

Believed to be in his mid-20s with closely cut blond hair and about 5 feet 11 inches, the man was known to be on campus, first at Boatwright Library, from as early as 2:30 until sometime before 3 p.m.

Extra police patrols were expected overnight and today, and Richmond police went to nearby markets and fast-food outlets last night with a picture of the suspect inside the library.

"You cannot see his face. What is the use," said a clerk at the Getty Mart on Three Chopt Road near the Village Shopping Center.

"Police feel the suspect has left the campus and the area," Eckert said as police from the university, Henrico County and Richmond backed off a visible presence on the campus about 7:30 p.m.

The university is asking employees, faculty and students to be vigilant and report any suspicious behavior. Also, Eckert said, a safety shuttle will run nightly from 7 p.m. until 2:30 a.m.

But with exams concluded last week and graduations this weekend, most undergraduate students have left the university. Law students still were on campus for final exams. Officials could not immediately say how many students were on campus.

After first checking Boatwright, police using scent dogs inspected other campus buildings and then went into the neighborhood, Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe said.

Monroe said police were checking homeless encampments and that they hoped to identify a possible suspect from the surveillance photo taken by a library security camera. The person in the surveillance photo matches the description given by employees who saw him, UR officials said.

No gunshots were reported.

At Patterson Avenue and Three Chopt Road last night, a bearded homeless man who said his name is Brian Strong pleaded for donations with a hand-painted sign. "One of the [scent] dogs came right up and sniffed at me," he said.

At an Exxon station across the street, employee Sam Lall said the area is a gathering place for homeless men, some of whom live in woods nearby.

Sometime before 2:30 p.m. yesterday, Lall said the station's owner spotted a man matching the suspect's description walking across the gas station lot toward UR.

Eckert said the suspect came to the library's circulation desk between 2:30 and 2:45 p.m. Library employees did not allow him to enter when they saw him as someone who likely was not a student.

Eckert said the person then left, apparently without incident, through the front entrance and walked across a patio where other school employees saw him removing the beard and brown jacket and stuffing them into an army-style duffel bag.

About 4:30 p.m., a portion of the fake beard was found by university police on a lawn that slopes away from the library's patio. They gave that to the scent dogs.

"We've had two different reports from witnesses who said he had a firearm," said Linda Evans, another UR spokesperson. The last time the person was reported seen was between 2:45 and 3 p.m.

An initial UR alert went out by e-mail, voice mail and text message about 3:25 p.m., Evans said, reporting that a dangerous person had been seen on campus and to use caution. It was followed by a second alert about 4:20 p.m. that reported a person had been seen with a gun, that the campus had been locked down, and that urged everyone to secure themselves, Evans said. That message also described the suspect.

That timeline means that at least 80 minutes went by between the unconfirmed report of a possible gunman and an alert to the university community that specifically mentioned the weapon.

"I think the response was excellent," UR Police Chief Robert Dillard said. He and Eckert, the university spokesman, said the time lapse relative to the gun occurred because of the need by police to confirm the weapons report. Time sequences can differ by several minutes because of the time it takes to alert such a large number of people, Eckert said.

As late as 4:45 p.m., the entrances to the campus did not have a heavy police presence, however, and some students were seen walking around, apparently unaware a lockdown was in effect. Police, though, went from building to building to find people and escort employees, students and teachers to their cars so they could leave campus.

Eckert said the school does not have a siren warning system and that about 45 percent of the student body has signed up to receive alerts.

"Like every campus, it's a problem to get people on board," he said. And he added, "What all campuses have learned [since the Virginia Tech shootings last year] is that there is no one method of communication in circumstances like this to reach everybody."

Walking by about 20 reporters and an equal number of police between the library and Westhampton Lake about 5 p.m., UR student Alex Harris said she was unaware of the threat.

She pulled out her laptop computer and opened her e-mail to find multiple alerts about a possible gunman. The first alert, at 3:42 p.m., warned of "a dangerous person . . . on campus" and urged caution.

She scrolled through later messages to see that the campus was on lockdown.

"Wow," she said. "I had no idea."

Eckert said he accompanied police investigating the first reports of the suspect and was the one who authorized the university's communication office to issue the first alert to the university community. Henrico and Richmond police were alerted about 3:38 p.m., according to spokesmen in those jurisdictions.

The gunman sighting at UR also had an effect on two nearby private schools in the city's West End.

St. Christopher's School stopped all after-school games, practices and other activities and brought the students and adults into buildings as a precaution, spokeswoman Susan Mistr said.

At St. Catherine's, precautions also were taken. "We're just going to stay tight until we hear something," said Laura Erickson, head of school.

But life around the campus seemed not to impede life-as-usual too greatly. At a tennis court adjacent to the school, two couples played tennis.

And Randy Herring, taking an evening jog around the lake despite a still-visible contingent of police and scent dogs, paused to ask a reporter: "What's going on?"

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.

Contact Linda Dunham at (804) 775-8126 or ldunham@timesdispatch.com.

Staff writer Will Jones contributed to this report.