Scary moments for some students, faculty, and staff on the Youngstown State University campus when the campus is put on lockdown at 11:30 Monday morning.

A physical confrontation on the second floor of the Kilcawley Center between a student and a 19-year-old Youngstown man happened around 11:07 am at the information desk.

It remains unclear what the altercation was over, but according to YSU Police Chief Shawn Varso there was pushing and shoving and words exchanged and allegedly the suspect brandished a gun during the confrontation.

The victim immediately left the scene and called the police for help and when officers arrived they would learn the suspect was 19-year-old Robert Allen was last seen in the vicinity of the Recreation Center on campus on the Breezeway level.

But after searching the Rec Center officers rushed to their cruisers, and acting on another tip hit their lights and sirens and swarmed a campus parking garage where someone thought they spotted the suspect.  However, the tip did not pan out.

YSU Police, working with the Youngstown Police Department, the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and several Task Forces blanketed the campus and the city's northside looking for the suspect, as the campus community sheltered in place and waited for text alerts for updates.

The YSU Police Chief says the victim in the case initially said the suspect had a gun, but then became uncooperative at one point, so the question is was there really a gun?

"We are actually interviewing witnesses to see if that's the fact.  We have no physical evidence.  We have no firearm in our custody.  So we are investigating that," Chief Varso said.

Loved ones like a mom named Karen from Howland couldn't stay at work, she came to campus and talked to her daughter by cell phone as she waited for the lockdown to be lifted.

"She's actually keeping me calm.  I would actually love to say it's the other way around.  But she's actually staying very calm.  And it's actually very hard as a mom not to be right where your kid is and take care of whatever is going on," Karen said.

As police stepped up their search, they were able to reach the suspect by phone and convinced Allen to turn himself in for questioning.

At this point, he has not been charged in relation to anything related to the campus lockdown or alleged assault, but he is being held at the jail on an unrelated charge.

The lockdown was lifted before hitting the two-hour mark.

Students are just thankful to be safe and head home for the rest of the day.

Nicholas Petro is a YSU Freshman, "It was so scary.  You never know nowadays, because of all these mass shootings, and we heard there was a guy with a gun on campus."

Jenna Hartz, a YSU student from Grove City, Pennsylvania walked out of the lockdown with half a dozen friends and admits she was terrified initially, "I cried myself, I was very nervous.  I was kind of very scared.  But I kind of calmed down and it was like ok.  But they kept updating us with the Penguin alerts so we kind of knew what was going on.  The thing is you don't really expect it to happen until it happens to you."

YSU President Jim Tressel tells 21 News during a news briefing, "We're fortunate where we are that Youngstown Police was right on the spot, there were other jurisdictions that stepped right in.  We got alerts from the FBI and others asked if there was anything that they could do."

President Tressel goes on to say, "It's just a reminder that we take those alerts and we take those directions very seriously and that we don't ever assume that we're making something more of something than it ought to be.  Because you know when you have a real problem you need to make it priority number one."