By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The University of Cincinnati engineering student who killed his ex-girlfriend and her friend Monday bought the shotgun less than four hours before at Wal-Mart in Columbia Township, police said.

Nicklaus Joyce told a roommate the gun was for a hunting trip he planned to take this weekend, Cincinnati homicide Detective Bob Randolph said Wednesday.

The roommate last saw Mr. Joyce about 10:15 p.m. Sunday, when he helped him with his car after Mr. Joyce apparently ran over a curb in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Investigators aren't sure where Mr. Joyce, 23, spent the next 2‡ hours, the last of his life, Detective Randolph said, and they'll likely never know.

It was 12:52 a.m. Monday when police were called to a Westwood condo where, police said, Mr. Joyce had used the shotgun to shoot fellow UC students Jennifer Duke, 19, and Nicklas Tipple, 20, multiple times. He then shot himself.

Ms. Duke had broken up with Mr. Joyce on Saturday during a weekend trip home to suburban Columbus, Detective Randolph said.

The relationship had been rocky for several weeks, he said, yet Mr. Joyce still spent the rest of the weekend at the Duke house in Hilliard before driving back to Cincinnati with Ms. Duke and her brother, Michael, 18, on Sunday.

They got to the UC campus about 5 p.m. and the Dukes dropped Mr. Joyce off at his dorm. He got into his car and drove to the condo to pick up some of his belongings, the detective said. He left shortly thereafter and returned at some point to his dorm room before leaving there about 9 p.m. to go to Wal-Mart.

Investigators aren't sure how long Mr. Joyce was in the condo before the shootings, Detective Randolph said. They know Michael Duke went to bed about 11 p.m. and woke up when he heard the gunshots that killed his sister and the man she had met in physics class and just started dating.

Mr. Duke grabbed his cordless phone, hid in his bedroom closet and dialed 911, whispering for the police to come in a hurry.

Ms. Duke and Mr. Tipple were students at UC's College of Applied Science in Walnut Hills.

It will be weeks, Detective Randolph said, before he gets results of tests to determine whether Mr. Joyce had any substances in his blood.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com