A gunman shot by police at the University of California, Berkeley, was a student and has died of his wounds, officials said on Wednesday, downplaying links with anti-Wall Street protests.
The 32-year-old died late on Tuesday after the shooting, which occurred as hundreds of protesters descended on the elite college — although there was no link between the protests and the incident.
The police officers involved have been placed on administrative leave while an investigation into the shooting continues.
“He passed away yesterday evening. He was involved as an undergraduate student at our Haas School of Business,” Berkeley spokeswoman Claire Holmes said, adding: “He died in surgery.”
“This is one of the most difficult times we have had as a community,” University chancellor Robert Birgeneau told staff and students at the grief-stricken Haas School of Business community.
The student — named as Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis — was shot by police in a computer lab at the business school, after refusing to surrender his weapon when asked to by officers, police said on Tuesday.
Giving an update on Wednesday, 24 hours after the shooting, UC Berkeley Police Captain Margo Bennett said Travis was carrying a loaded, semiautomatic 9mm Ruger handgun when he was shot multiple times at about 2:25pm on Tuesday.
No motive had yet been found, Bennett said, adding that 20 witnesses had so far been questioned.
She described how four officers entered the school’s computer lab, where Travis had gone, and where there were nine people.
“Upon noticing the officers, Travis pulled out his gun. The police repeatedly asked him to ‘put down the gun, put down the gun, put down the weapon,’” she said.
Instead, “Travis pointed his gun at the officers. One of the officers shot at Travis,” a Berkeley statement said, adding that officers applied first aid until paramedics arrived to take him to hospital, where he died.
Holmes added there was still no indication that the shooting, the first such incident on the campus since the 1980s, was linked with the protesters.
“As far as we know, there is no link with the protesters at this time that we can determine,” she said.
The officer who shot the suspect was put on administrative leave immediately after the shooting, along with two other officers, as was normal policy in such circumstances, UC Berkeley Police Chief Mitchell Celaya said.
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