Professor told UCLA shooter to ‘keep a cool head’ and ‘keep good relations’ with teachers
Details began emerging Friday about UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar’s life in India.
Sarkar, 38, grew up in Durgapur, now a city of half a million people, according to his high school teachers. His parents are dead, and a sister is believed to live in Kolkata.
In Durgapur, he attended St. Michael’s, an English-language school, where a teacher described him as “a very brilliant student” who was among the best in his class in the mid-1990s.
At the same time, Sarkar was reserved and “not the type who would go around and make friends very quickly,” biology teacher Lily Chowdhury told the Indo-Asian News Service. She called the news of the UCLA shooting “very shocking.”
At St. Michael’s, Sarkar cultivated a close relationship with Goutam Viswas, his mathematics and chemistry teacher. He often studied after school hours with Viswas, who described him as “very nice” and “a very normal chap.”
“He was not the most outgoing, but he had his friends,” Viswas said by phone from Durgapur.
“We are shocked at this news. It’s very difficult to match this incident with his behavior as a student.”
After a year or two at Indian Institutes of Technology at Kharagpur in eastern India, Sarkar returned to St. Michael’s to meet Viswas. Over the years, IIT has built a storied reputation, with its graduates becoming top executives at major corporations.
Sarkar was deeply focused on academics, the teacher recalled, and saw many IIT graduates go on to conduct post-graduate research in the United States.
That’s what Sarkar wanted more than anything, Viswas recalled.
“He wanted career advice,” Viswas said. “And I told him, ‘Keep a cool head and carry on; you have potential.’ And I also told him to keep good relations with all his faculty members. He agreed with that.”
In 2000, Sarkar earned an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at IIT, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Manas Kumar Laha, an aerospace engineering professor, said that while Sarkar’s name sounded familiar, he could not recall details of his time in the program.
“I don’t think he stood out in any way,” Laha said in an interview.
UCLA shooter’s neighbor: ‘We’re regular folk around here. You don’t expect it’
Todd Sorenson stood in the lobby of his small apartment complex in a quiet residential neighborhood here late Thursday night, his eyes bleary from a lack of sleep.
The roofer, who lived one floor below UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar, said news of the attack has left many in an otherwise peaceful community confused.
“It scared the crap out of me,” Sorenson said as his TV blared from his second-floor studio overhead. A row of mailboxes stood behind him. “Sarkar #8,” read one.
Sorenson, 49, said he didn’t speak with Sarkar much -- their only encounters were less than friendly. Sarkar would tell him not to smoke cigarettes out of the window below his, Sorenson said. The last time they spoke was a year ago, he added, when he slammed the door in Sarkar’s face.
Since the police showed up Wednesday night to investigate the case, Sorenson said, some of the neighbors have expressed shock.
“Oh my God, do I have to move?” Sorenson recalled one of his neighbors asking.
“It was scary for a lot of people, that someone like that would kill people,” he said. “We’re regular folk around here. You don’t expect it.”
Sorenson said the police didn’t leave until early Thursday morning. Officers took a couple of packages from the apartment and blew them up in containers outside to make sure they weren’t dangerous, he said.
Although police said the residents weren’t in danger, Sorenson said he was still shaken up by the news.
“That freaks me out. That really freaks me out,” he said. “It’s a good neighborhood with good people.”
Grief, shock at UCLA after professor gunned down on campus
Hundreds of students and faculty gathered at UCLA on Thursday night for a vigil mourning the professor who was killed on the Westwood campus by his former student.
The #BruinStrong candlelight vigil was held at Bruin Plaza and coincided with the commemoration of National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
Many held blue and yellow battery-powered candles as they paid tribute to William Klug, the 39-year-old mechanical and aerospace engineering professor who was gunned down in the university’s engineering building.
Former students and colleagues have expressed sadness and shock over Klug’s death.
“He’s a very good friend, a mentor, professor and teacher,” said Peng Lyu, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering who studied under Klug for two semesters. “I just cannot believe that that happened to him.”
Another vigil is scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday in the Court of Sciences on campus. That event, which is open to the public, is being organized by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
— Matt Hamilton and Brittny Mejia
Wife of slain UCLA professor: ‘This is an indescribable loss’
The widow of slain UCLA professor William Klug issued a statement on Thursday, asking the public and the media to respect her family’s privacy as they grieve:
“During this extremely difficult time for our family, we are grateful for the tremendous outpouring of support. This is an indescribable loss,” Mary Elise Klug said in her statement, which was distributed by the university.
“Bill was so much more than my soul mate. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life. Knowing that so many others share our family’s sorrow has provided a measure of comfort.
“That said, we are a very private family, and we need time to heal and recover from this senseless tragedy,” she said.
Slain UCLA professor William Klug had two children and many grateful students
William “Bill” Klug, a UCLA professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was insatiably curious about the way complex things worked – cancer cells, the HIV virus, the tissue in a beating heart.
Klug was said to be brilliant. He was said to be kind.
“If you asked who is the nicest professor at UCLA, many would say William Klug,” said Alan Garfinkel, a professor of integrative biology and physiology.
On Thursday, Klug was said to be greatly missed.
Read More— Teresa Watanabe, Hailey Branson-Potts and Brittny Mejia
At UCLA, two vigils and the hashtag #BruinStrong
Two vigils will be held on the UCLA campus this week as the community gathers after Wednesday’s murder-suicide.
A #BruinStrong candlelight vigil has been planned for 8:30 p.m. on Thursday at Bruin Plaza. Student organizers are urging people to show their solidarity on National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
“I call upon the Bruin family and community members across the state and nation to come together during this difficult time,” said Danny Siegel, president of the Undergraduate Students Assn. Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz and interfaith leaders are expected to attend.
Another vigil -- at 4 p.m. Friday, in the Court of Sciences -- is being organized by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. All are welcome, organizers said.
Woman who lived in house where body was found was married to UCLA shooter
Early Thursday, led by a “kill list” written by UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar, police in Brooklyn Park, Minn., entered a gray split-level home at 2457 Pearson Parkway.
Inside the home, shortly after midnight, they found a woman’s body. She had been shot to death.
Authorities declined to identify the woman.
But public records listed the resident of the home as Ashley Hasti.
According to Hennepin County Vital Records, Hasti married Sarkar on June 14, 2011.
It was unclear whether they were still married at the time of the shooting.
She didn’t know him, but she brought flowers
Deborah Gutierrez, who works as a transcriber at UCLA Medical Center, bought flowers for her desk at a farmers market on Thursday.
Then she decided to drop them off in front of the Engineering IV building.
She placed the flowers on some bushes, near a pink bouquet with a card that read, “Prof Klug, Smart and kind. We miss you.”
“It’s so emotional,” Gutierrez said, close to tears. “This hit so close to home.
Sarkar’s ‘check on my cat’ note made LAPD ‘uneasy’
The note police found from Mainak Sarkar at the scene of the UCLA murder-suicide said “check on my cat” and gave the shooter’s Minnesota address.
“Immediately, we were highly suspicious,” said LAPD Chief Charlie Beck. “That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota.”
The LAPD worked with the FBI and Minnesota authorities and served a search warrant at Mainak Sarkar’s home. Inside, they found three names on a “kill list,” the chief said.
A cat. apparently named Kitty, also was found in the house.
Mainak Sarkar went to Stanford before UCLA
Mainak Sarkar, who has been identified as the UCLA shooter, attended Stanford from fall 2003 until spring 2005, said university spokeswoman Lisa Lapin.
He received a master’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, Lapin said.
“According to the people here who looked at his record, it was an uneventful time here,” Lapin said.
He completed the standard two-year curriculum for the degree, she said.
‘He’s a great man,’ UCLA student says of Klug
Hongjie Zhang, a UCLA postdoctoral student, took a moment to talk about his former professor as he walked into the engineering building on Thursday.
“He’s a great man. Smart,” said Zhang, who took a class with Klug in 2008 or 2009. “I think he was really nice.”
Zhang said Klug would always help students when they needed it.
Jizhai Cui, who said Klug was at one point on his PhD committee, was “a very famous professor in our department.”
Cui never took one of his classes but said his friends described them as the best they had taken.
“He’s very scientific, he cares about the student,” he said. “His graduate class is very hard, but a hard class always teaches you a lot. That’s why students always benefit a lot from his classes.”
A civil engineering junior who asked that his name not be used said he took a math lab coding class with Klug last year. Klug made the class fun, cracking jokes, he said.
“Every time I went to his office hours, there’s no way he would let me leave his office hours without him fixing my code. Even if it was past his office hours,” he said. “Great person, great professor.”
‘Will & Grace’ actress Debra Messing apologizes for UCLA-shooting selfie
Actress Debra Messing apologized Wednesday for tweeting a selfie in a t-shirt that said “under the gun” as she was watching events unfold at UCLA.
The “Will & Grace” actress immediately drew criticism on Twitter for her timing.
Mainak Sarkar, 38, a former doctoral student and Minnesota resident, shot UCLA professor William Klug multiple times in a small office in UCLA Engineering Building 4 before taking his own life, authorities said. The shooting triggered a lockdown at the UCLA campus and thousands of students raced to barricade themselves in classrooms.
Messing deleted the tweet and later issued a statement, explaining that she was asked to wear the orange shirt and post a selfie to bring awareness to gun violence.
“Today we were asked to have our Voices heard,” she tweeted. “The horrendous Irony is the timing of yet another shooting. This has NOTHING to do with me.”
Messing went on to say the following:
UCLA gunman’s former neighbors say he was ‘quiet,’ ‘normal’
Across from a busy on-ramp to the 405 Freeway is a cream-and-aqua two-story apartment complex where the shooter in Wednesday’s murder-suicide once lived.
The building is one of several that sit along Beloit Avenue, a little more than two miles from UCLA in the Sawtelle neighborhood.
Public records indicate the gunman, Mainak Sarkar, lived at the complex in 2010.
On Thursday, at least two residents there recalled seeing Sarkar and said he kept to himself. They said they believe that Sakar lived at the apartment complex for about four to five months before leaving.
“He was quiet,” said Lucia Esquivel. “He didn’t say much.”
Eugenio Martinez, 30, said he would sometimes see Sarkar watching other residents and assumed he just enjoyed people- watching.
“I just remember he was very observant of everyone. He never spoke, at least not to me,” Martinez said. “He seemed normal and tranquil.”
LAPD chief: Gunman in UCLA shooting went to campus to kill two professors but could only find one
Detectives believe the gunman who killed a UCLA professor before committing suicide Wednesday intended to kill another professor while on campus, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Thursday.
Beck said the gunman – identified as Mainak Sarkar, 38 – was “heavily armed” with two semiautomatic pistols and extra ammunition when he went to Professor William Klug’s office Wednesday morning and killed Klug before turning the gun on himself. A note from Sarkar included language about a second professor, Beck said.
“We believe…that he went to kill two faculty from UCLA,” Beck said. “He was only able to locate one.”
“He was certainly prepared to engage multiple victims,” the chief added.
‘He helped me a lot’: UCLA student says slain professor was more than an advisor
Inside the Engineering 4 building Thursday it was quiet, but outside, dozens of students hurried by with backpacks and coffee.
One of them, Peng Lyu, came to UCLA from China in 2012 and is in his fourth year studying for a PhD in mechanical engineering.
Lyu took two classes with William S. Klug, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who was killed in Wednesday’s murder-suicide. When Lyu first arrived at UCLA, Klug was Lyu’s academic advisor.
Lyu said Klug helped him by sharing cultural information in order to better adjust to life in the U.S.
Klug would ask Lyu about how his first few months were going, if he liked the campus, if he liked the classes and if he felt comfortable.
“He’s a very good friend, a mentor, professor and teacher,” Lyu said of Klug. “I just cannot believe that that happened to him.
“He helped me a lot.”
UCLA shooter was ‘homicidal,’ LAPD chief says
Los Angeles police detectives have begun retracing the steps of apparent UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar, particulary his drive from his home in Minnesota to Southern California.
Sarkar, 38, drove from Minnesota to Los Angeles, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times. It was unclear how long he was in L.A. before Wednesday’s shooting, the chief said, though detectives don’t believe it was “more than a couple of days.”
Police are still looking for his car, described as a 2003 gray Nissan Sentra with the Minnesota license plate 720 KTW.
Detectives were also trying to contact “other people in his life out of an abundance of caution” to make sure there were no additional victims, Beck said.
“We don’t have anything that would lead us directly to another victim,” the chief said. “But obviously this guy was homicidal.”
On Wednesday, Sarkar carried a backpack, two semiautomatic pistols and extra magazines to William Klug’s fourth-floor office, where he fatally shot the professor before turning the gun on himself, the chief said.
Klug, 39, was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Klug, a second UCLA professor and a woman were on a “kill list” found in Sarkar’s home in Minnesota. Authorities went to the woman’s home in Minnesota, where they found her dead from a gunshot wound.
The chief said it was not immediately clear if Sarkar looked for the other professor named on the so-called “kill list” before finding Klug. The second professor, whom Beck did not name, wasn’t on campus at the time of the shooting. Police have since contacted that person, the chief said, and the professor “is fine.”
Brooklyn Park police working with LAPD after body found inside Minnesota home
Responding to a request for a welfare check from police officers 1,500 miles away, police in Minnesota on Thursday found the body of a woman inside a home that could be connected to UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar, officials said.
Officers went to the home and found the body after midnight, Brooklyn Park Deputy Police Chief Mark Bruley said at a news conference.
“We have multiple detectives working on this case,” Bruley said. “We’re working with LAPD to coordinate our efforts.”
In a discussion with reporters Thursday morning, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck revealed that the gunman in Wednesday’s murder-suicide at UCLA had made a “kill list” with three names on it, one of which was connected to the Brooklyn Park address.
Bruley declined to identify the woman or say how she was connected to Sarkar. He did say she was apparently killed before Wednesday’s shooting in Southern California and that there had not been any recent calls for service.
“As information is unfolded over the next couple of days, we’ll work hard to get that out to you without jeopardizing the investigation,” Bruley said.
Read More— Joseph Serna and Richard Winton
UCLA gunman left a note at scene, asking someone to ‘check on my cat,’ LAPD chief says
UCLA gunman Mainak Sarkar left a note at scene, asking someone to “check on my cat,” LAPD police chief says.
When detectives arrived at William Klug’s office at the UCLA campus Wednesday, they found a note from Sarkar, 38, listing his home address in Minnesota and a request to check on his cat’s welfare, Police Chief Charlie Beck told the Los Angeles Times.
“Immediately, we were highly suspicious,” Beck said. “That made me uneasy about what we would find when we got to Minnesota.”
Sarkar took his own life Wednesday morning after killing William Klug, 39, in a small office in UCLA Engineering Building 4, according to authorities.
Klug, who was shot multiple times, was an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Klug, another UCLA professor and a woman who lived in a nearby Minnesota town were named in a “kill list” found in Sakar’s home.
The LAPD worked with the FBI and Minnesota authorities and served a search warrant at Sarkar’s home. Inside, Beck said, they found the list, extra ammunition and a box for one of the two pistols found at the UCLA scene.
Authorities went to the woman’s home, Beck said, and found her body inside. It appeared she had been dead from a gunshot wound for “maybe a couple of days,” the chief said.
Beck declined to name the woman, but said Sarkar was the suspect in her slaying.
“We would physically arrest him were he still alive,” the chief said.
Details about the UCLA shooter: He drove from Minnesota to L.A. and had two guns
Gunman killed a woman in Minnesota and had a kill list, LAPD chief says
Sarkar, a resident of Minnesota, appears also to have killed a woman in a small town in that state. The woman’s name was found on a “kill list” in Sarkar’s residence, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said during an interview on KTLA.
UCLA gunman ID’d, had accused slain professor of stealing his computer code
The gunman who shot and killed a UCLA professor Wednesday has been identified as Mainak Sarkar, a former doctoral student who had accused the victim of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else, according to Los Angeles police.
‘Fighting traffic and emotions’: An L.A. Times photographer races to UCLA to find his daughter
L.A. Times photographer Irfan Khan juggled roles as a photojournalist and father Wednesday as he raced to cover the shooting at UCLA and to locate his daughter, a student at the school.
Khan tweeted on his way to the campus:
Then tweeted again when he found his daughter safe:
Father and daughter talked about their harrowing day later Wednesday:
L.A. Times photographer Irfan Khan juggled roles as a photojournalist and father as he raced to cover the shooting at UCLA and to locate his daughter, a student at the school.
Sources identify professor killed in UCLA shooting as William S. Klug
Several sources identified the victim in the UCLA murder-suicide as William S. Klug, 39, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who studied the interaction between mechanics and biology and was the father of two young children.
Klug was described as both brilliant and kind, a rare blend in the competitive world of academic research, colleagues said.
“I am absolutely devastated,” said Alan Garfinkel, a professor of integrative biology and physiology who worked with Klug to develop a computer-generated virtual heart. “You cannot ask for a nicer, gentler, sweeter and more supportive guy than William Klug.”
Melissa Gibbons, one of Klug’s former Ph.D students, said he was an exceptional mentor. She recalled that Klug noticed another student struggling in his finite element modeling class and asked Gibbons to tutor her. “He didn’t want to see her fail. To care that much in an undergraduate class says a lot about his character,” she said.
Klug, an El Segundo resident who was married with two young children, loved surfing and frequently took his family to Los Angeles Dodgers games. He earned his undergraduate degree in engineering physics from Westmont College in 1997, his master’s degree in civil engineering at UCLA in 1999 and his Ph.D in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2003.
— Teresa Watanabe and Richard Winton
UCLA softball team learns of shooting on the road
The UCLA softball team was preparing to hold its final practice Wednesday in Oklahoma City before opening play in the Women’s College World Series when players were alerted by social media of a shooting 1,300 miles away on their campus.
“The girls were affected as far as hearing from people that were on lockdown on campus, so that’s always emotional and can be traumatic,” UCLA Coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said.
“All I could do was pull them together to simply say, ‘It’s a crazy world we live in, and it’s a perfect example of understanding what is in your control and what is out of your control.’”
No engineering classes this week at UCLA
Final exams and commencement will proceed as scheduled next week at UCLA, officials said Wednesday afternoon. Most classes will resume Thursday except for in the engineering programs, said executive vice chancellor and provost Scott L. Waugh.
“The campus remains in a state of sorrow over the tragic shooting and loss of two members of the Bruin community this morning,” Waugh said in an afternoon news briefing.
“We’re trying to restore the campus to order as quickly as possible,” he added. “We’re very saddened by the loss of these two lives today, but we’re hoping we can recover quickly.”
Waught declined to identify the names of the two who died in what has been described as a murder-suicide.
The university is offering extended hours for counseling to accommodate students, faculty and staff.
Waugh said the school is working to ensure that the campus is safe.
Our primary goal right now is to review all of our security procedures to make sure our campus is as secure as possible,” Waugh said. He said he was “troubled” by reports of doors that would not lock but pleased about how the school’s notification system worked.
L.A. City Council talks violence on day of UCLA shootings
The UCLA shootings took place on the same day that the Los Angeles City Council was staging an early ceremony for National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
One activist who attended the City Hall event said it was the second time in the last year that council members have interrupted a discussion of gun violence to announce that a shooting had just taken place elsewhere in Southern California.
“The first time it was San Bernardino,” said Laurie Saffian, co-chair of the nonprofit group Women Against Gun Violence. “For this to be the second time that something like this is announced, it’s just really a very sobering thought -- that our country is really suffering from an epidemic of huge proportions.”
National Gun Violence Awareness Day is Thursday.
During Wednesday’s meeting, council members voted to ask for a study on the sources of guns recovered from crimes in Los Angeles.
“Just today, as the City Council voted on my motion to identify how guns make it onto our streets, we got news of another fatal shooting, this one on UCLA’s campus,” said Councilman Paul Krekorian, who proposed the study.
“Though we don’t know all the details about this particular shooting, we do know that many crimes like this are committed by people with guns they shouldn’t have access to, guns sold by a few ‘bad apple’ gun dealers. I want to determine the source of the guns that make it onto our streets so that we can then take appropriate steps to protect the public.”
Students tie belts around door hinges, gather scissors during lockdown
As police worked to secure the UCLA campus during the lockdown Wednesday, scared students and staff hunkered down in classrooms across campus, some preparing themselves in case danger came their way.
Chris Walker and about 30 other students were in an English class at Royce Hall. They picked up the teacher’s desk and podium and stacked the furniture against the door as a barricade.
Walker unbuckled his leather belt and tied it around the door hinge, as he’d seen someone do in a YouTube video about what to do in an active shooting. He said he’d watched the video a few months ago, never thinking he’d put it to use.
Meanwhile, other students closed the shutters, turned off the lights and hid below the windows. They propped open their laptops and watched on dimmed screens as armed police roamed their campus.
“I don’t think I had time to feel panic until it was over,” said Walker, a Long Beach native.
Frank Belasquez, 22, a graduating political science major, said students stacked metal file cabinets against the door at Dodd Hall. He watched on Snapchat as others looped their belts tightly around door hinges – as Walker had.
Another senior, Jared Neutel, 22, joined around 40 students in a lab. They sat together on the floor far from the doors and gathered makeshift weapons: a fire extinguisher, scissors and blades used for dissecting.
“We just did everything we could to make sure that we were safe,” Neutel said.
— Angel Jennings and Brittny Mejia
Violent crime is not common at UCLA
Violent crime is rare at UCLA, according to federal data.
The 419-acre Westwood campus of 43,000 students reported no on-campus murders, 136 robberies, 128 aggravated assaults and 193 sex offenses between 2001 and 2014.
The most common crime reported was burglary, with 1,872 incidents during that period.
This wasn’t one student’s first campus shooting
The routine seemed all too familiar to Jeremy Peschard. The alerts rolled in about an active shooter. Buildings were locked to protect the students inside. Officers swarmed the campus.
Peschard had seen it all two years before during the shooting rampage in Isla Vista near UC Santa Barbara.
Peschard, 22, a geography student, was behind a locked door with others in one of the geography offices at UCLA on Wednesday morning.
“It was really tense,” he said. “The difference between here and UCSB is that the mood is really, really tense and there’s more confusion.”
Group text massages filled with rumors only made things worse, Peschard said. Eventually, everyone in the room turned to CNN instead of waiting for information from friends.
Hiding in the office, Peschard had flashbacks to the Isla Vista attack.
“It’s crazy to go through this again,” he said.
Times photographers, on the scene at UCLA
Los Angeles Times photographers descended on UCLA’s campus soon after a shooter put the campus on lockdown.
Here are some of the moments they captured:
Hours of terror for UCLA parents
Mary Zilba was one of many parents of UCLA students who watched in fear on television as their children’s school became the scene of yet another campus shooting. In the early moments, information was hard to come by.
Zilba was sitting in her office in Vancouver, Canada, when a colleague watching CNN called and said, “Oh, my God, there’s been a shooting at UCLA.”
She immediately called her son Cole Anderson, a junior studying political science. Anderson had transferred to UCLA last year from UC Santa Barbara, the site of another campus shooting.
Zilba was relieved to find that Anderson was safe in his UCLA dorm room.
“He could hear helicopters everywhere, they don’t know what to do,” she said.
Editorial: ‘Another incident in the daily parade of gun violence’
The call came from the UCLA campus just before 10 a.m. – someone had opened fire with a gun. “Active shooter,” and the warning went out for those on campus to shelter in place. Where was it? The Engineering 4 building.
Police arrived in waves, along with firefighters and other emergency responders. The Los Angeles Police Department went on citywide tactical alert, the better to marshal resources, as television showed students being escorted to safety, hands on their heads, by officers in tactical gear.
And then the wait. What had happened? Was there still someone with a gun? Was it still dangerous? Was this going to be another horrific scene of of violence, like that at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in October?
In this case, it was two dead. Murder-suicide in a small office. And so America shrugs. Just another incident in the daily parade of gun violence that defines contemporary America.
Read More— Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
Local politicians weigh in on shooting at UCLA
Local politicians were quick to weigh in on the shooting at UCLA. Several called for stiffer gun control regulations.
Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), a UCLA alumnus, said that while it was “too early for us to know whether changes in public policy could have prevented this tragedy” it “should be viewed in light of other recent shootings which have taught us that we need additional common sense gun control measures.”
City Attorney Mike Feuer said the shooting was “another grim reminder that in America today gun violence respects no boundaries.”
“We cannot allow shootings to become a way of life in our nation,” Feuer said. “On the eve of National Gun Violence Awareness Day, all Americans should join in proclaiming that enough is enough -- and take the practical steps necessary to make us all safer.”
Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) said he had been at UCLA on Tuesday.
“I’m distressed and saddened to hear about gun violence on campus,” he said. “I’m keeping the students, families, and our first responders in my thoughts.”
Lockdowns lifted at LAUSD schools near UCLA
Garcetti ‘heartbroken’ and ‘angered’ after UCLA shooting
On Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a statement on the UCLA shooting:
“My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by what appears to have been a murder-suicide on the campus of UCLA,” Garcetti said. “This horrific event, at an institution dedicated to learning and mutual understanding, reminds us once again of the fragility of a peaceful society. Thankfully, the campus is now safe — but I am heartbroken by the sight of SWAT teams running down avenues normally filled with students, and angered by the fear that one person with a firearm can inflict on a community. I want to commend the entire UCLA community for its extraordinary grace and calm on a traumatic morning.”
Student may have shot professor, source says
A law enforcement official told The Times that based on the appearances of the dead, police think that a professor had been shot by someone young enough to be a student. The shooter then turned the gun on himself.
The shooting occurred on the fourth floor of the engineering building.
Today’s UCLA murder-suicide was the 186th U.S. school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012
There have been 186 shootings on school campuses in the U.S. since Dec. 14, 2012, when 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., according to Everytown For Gun Safety, an advocacy group.
By that count, a gun has been fired on school grounds nearly once a week since the Sandy Hook shootings.
Today’s shooting happened one day before National Gun Violence Awareness day
The second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day is Thursday, one day after the UCLA shooting.
Organizers are asking people to raise awareness and “wear orange.” According to the official Wear Orange website, the campaign was launched by a group of high school students who wore orange to celebrate the life of Hadiya Pendleton, 15, a Chicago girl who was shot and killed one week after marching in President Obama’s 2013 inaugural parade.
“What started in a South Side high school to celebrate Hadiya has turned into a nationwide movement to honor all lives cut short by gun violence,” the website reads.
Orange often is associated with gun safety. Hunters wear it, and all toy guns are required by law to have orange tips on their barrels.
U.S. landmarks, including the Empire State Building, will be illuminated in orange on Thursday night, according to the National Urban League.
Note found at scene of UCLA shooting, police say
LAPD spokesman Capt. Andy Neiman has confirmed that a note was found near the victims.
“There is some writing at the scene, but we don’t know what the connection is, if any,” Neiman said.
Lockdown lifted, but no classes at UCLA
Students and staff describe chaos at UCLA
Students, staff and faculty said there was panic at UCLA on Wednesday morning after reports of an active shooter put the campus on lockdown.
Jason Naderi, 20, a third-year biology major from Tarzana, said he was among dozens of students sherltering in a campus library.
Naderi was coming out of his chemistry class on South Campus, near Boelter Hall, when he heard a commotion.
“Everybody was looking at something ... I heard somebody yell, ‘Leave! Run! Escape now!’”
People started running. Then he heard someone else yell: “Someone has a gun! Someone has a gun!” He thought he heard shots coming from the building.
Police told Naderi and other students to get into a building as soon as possible. Speaking to a Times reporter by phone, Naderi said students in the library were hunched over their laptops and cellphones.
“I’m still in shock .... It’s just such an overwhelming situation,” he said.
Alex Baquero, 31, was installing fixtures in Boelter Hall when he heard students running down the hallway. At first, he said didn’t think anything of it — there have been active-shooter drills in the past.
But within an instant, all that changed. Police arrived. Baquero heard a man yell, “Run! Run! Run! Active shooter!”
Baquero dashed into a room and locked himself in.
“It was such a madhouse,” he said. “People were just trying to get out.”
Read More— Brittny Mejia, Joseph Serna, Hailey Branson-Potts
Obama is briefed on shooting
President Obama was briefed on the shooting at UCLA, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said shortly after the president landed in Elkhart, Ind., for an event on the economy.
“He asked his team to keep him updated on the situation,” Earnest said in a statement.
Shooting was a murder-suicide; no continued threat, LAPD chief says
The shooting at UCLA, which occurred in a small office in the engineering building, was a murder-suicide, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said.
Two men are dead.
“There is no continuing threat to UCLA’s campus,” Beck said.
Police rushing to UCLA shooting
One victim could be the shooter, says UCLA police chief James Herren
Police swarm UCLA, search students after shooting
At the Mathematical Sciences Building, near Boelter Hall, police officers in tactical gear stood at entryways holding rifles.
Nine students walked out of the building with their hands raised in the air and were led to a sidewalk by an LAPD officer.
The officer told the students to kneel in a line and then methodically searched each one. Afterward, the students walked one by one down the sidewalk, away from the building as police helicopters clattered overhead.
Shooting occurred at Boelter Hall complex, UCLA spokesman says
The shooting took place at the Boelter Hall complex, according to UCLA spokesman Ricardo Vazquez. He had no further information on whether the shooting took place in a classroom, or on the identities of victims or shooters.
See images from the UCLA shooting aftermath
Photos by Irfhan Khan / Los Angeles Times
Two dead in shooting at UCLA, campus on lockdown
Two people were killed in a shooting at UCLA on Wednesday morning, prompting a massive response from local and federal law enforcement, the LAPD confirmed.
UCLA’s student newspaper describes shooter
Eyewitness: ‘The whole campus just started running’
Mehwish Khan, a 21-year-old psychobiology student, took cover in the library along with several other students.
“The whole campus just started running, and I started running too,” she told a reporter over her cellphone.
“Everyone was very confused. We got in a building, and no one knew what was going on,” she said.
As she spoke by phone, she started hearing helicopters hovering overhead.
“A lot of people thought it was a joke or a drill,” she said.
The location of the shooting at UCLA
UCLA on lockdown