Student fatally shot after he stabbed five on UC-Merced campus

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/11/04/319876ee-8343-11e5-8ba6-cec48b74b2a7_story.html

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MERCED, Calif. — A student stabbed and injured five people as classes got underway at a rural university campus in central California before police shot and killed him, authorities said Wednesday.

All those attacked at the University of California at Merced were conscious when paramedics reached them, Assistant Vice Chancellor Patti Waid said. Two victims were taken by helicopter to hospitals, but their conditions were not immediately known, officials said.

The other three had injuries that were minor enough that they could be treated on campus, Waid said. Campus officials said that some, but not all, of the victims are students.

They said the assailant was a student but had not confirmed his identity or provided a motive for his attack. Officials said that they were working out a timeline of events leading up to the stabbings and that it wasn’t clear how the attack played out.

University senior Phil Coba, a student government representative, said numerous students told him that the stabbings started inside a classroom and continued outside before campus police shot and killed the attacker.

Authorities have not confirmed those accounts and have said the attack occurred outside a building as students went in to class shortly after 8 a.m.

Student Alex Lopez, 21, said he was heading to class when he realized something was wrong. “I was listening to a podcast, and there was a break in talking, and I just hear a gunshot,” he said.

He said police and first responders flooded the scene.

“You see this stuff all over the news and stuff, and you see it happen to all these other schools,” but you don’t expect it to happen at your school, Lopez said.

The school, with more than 6,600 students, is about 120 miles south of Sacramento in the farm-rich San Joaquin Valley. The campus in the city of Merced opened a decade ago and is the newest college in the University of California system.