Students and others are searched by security officers after a campus shooting, at the University of California's Los Angeles campus. (AFP Photo)
Two people were killed Wednesday morning in a murder-suicide at the University of California at Los Angeles, shootings that led police to lock down the campus for about two hours while officers searched and cleared the area.
Law enforcement officials Wednesday night identified the victim of the shooting as mechanical engineering professor William S. Klug, a married father of two, the Associated Press reported. The shooter has not yet been identified.
"The campus is now safe," Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said at a news conference in the afternoon. "The issue that occurred has been contained."
Beck said the two men were found in a small office in the engineering building.
"Many, many questions are unanswered at this point," Beck said, noting that it was possible there was a suicide note at the scene.
Reports of several shots fired at the city campus started coming in about 10 a.m. local time, and authorities quickly locked down the campus of 43,000 students. Police urged people to stay away, and students barricaded themselves in classrooms and dorms as dozens of local and federal law enforcement officials streamed in.
With the semester wrapping up, some students were still in class. The main commencement is scheduled for June 10.
The university said the campus reopened a short time after noon, but classes were canceled for the rest of the day. The engineering school will reopen Monday, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh told the AP.
A lawyer in Orange County, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, was worried when he heard reports of a shooter in the engineering building where his father, a professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, has an office. In a text exchange, his father described having to hold a door closed while shots were fired.
"My dad is now out safe, thankfully," he said in a telephone interview. "They locked down in their offices till SWAT teams broke down the doors and escorted everyone out of the building."
Many students who hunkered down in classrooms said that doors could not be locked and that they had to secure them with belts, cords and other items. Senior Daphne Ying, 21, told the AP that she and others tied one end of a long cord to the doorknob and the other end to a chair bolted to the floor. Three male students stood near the door to pull it shut.
"Doors open outward with no locks so we had to improvise our own locking mechanism," tweeted engineering student Pranasha Shrestha, 22.
Waugh said university officials were troubled by such reports. "We'll review the locks on the doors and any security issue that has arisen in the course of today," he told the AP.
Because of the UCLA lockdown, police across the city were placed on tactical alert, according to the LAPD. The LAPD and FBI responded to the shootings, as did agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. President Barack Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One on the shooting, according to the White House.
© 2016 The Washington Post
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