A student armed with a hunting knife stabbed four people on
Wednesday before he was shot dead by campus police at the
University of California, Merced, in the heart of the state's
Central Valley, law enforcement and school officials said.
The four victims - two students, a campus employee and a
construction worker credited with helping prevent more bloodshed
- were taken to hospitals for treatment, two by helicopter,
though all are expected to make a full recovery, officials said.
The identity of the suspect, a student in his early 20s who
lived on campus, was not being publicly released until his next
of kin were notified, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke told a
news conference hours later.
Authorities offered no explanation of a possible motive for the
rampage.
Classes at UC Merced, a campus of about 6,600 students, 300
faculty and about 1,000 other staff, were canceled through
Thursday, and university officials said they hoped to resume
normal operations on Friday.
The violence unfolded at the start of the day as the suspect
walked into a second-story classroom and attacked a fellow
student with a knife, according to an account by Warnke and
campus police chief Albert Vasquez.
A construction worker in the building who overheard sounds of a
struggle rushed into the class and was also stabbed before the
assailant fled, officials said. Warnke said the worker's actions
probably saved the life of the first victim.
Running down a flight of stairs outside the building, the
suspect encountered an academic advisor and stabbed her, before
stabbing another student.
The suspect was shot to death soon after by campus police
chasing him along Scholars' Lane, the main pedestrian walkway
through campus, officials said.
A police bomb squad was called to examine a backpack the suspect
was carrying, but no other weapons were found, Warnke said.
The campus was placed on a security lockdown as university
officials alerted students and staff by social media to stay put
until the situation was deemed safe.
The stabbings come about a month after a gunman killed nine
people and himself at a college in Oregon, in the deadliest of
dozens of U.S. mass shootings over the past two years.
The city of Merced, where the newest addition to the 10-campus
University of California system was opened 10 years ago, is
located 135 miles (217 km) southeast of San Francisco.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/05/us-california-stabbing-
idUSKCN0ST2LI20151105