Five Stabbed on Calif. Campus; Suspect Dead

MERCED, California -- Daniel Garcia-Ceja was walking to class at the University of California, Merced Wednesday morning and ran into a campus police barricade at the Scholars Lane bridge. Students stopped at the barricade were confused about why it was closed.

Garcia-Ceja, 21, said that, according to friends who were in the area at the time, a person with a knife was shot and killed on the bridge. They said they saw the assailant coming at students with a knife.

“Some of my friends wanted to cry. Some were upset. Some were in shock. It was insane to hear that this happened in general,” Garcia-Ceja said. “You know it’s happened at other universities, and you know schools have been through these situations … but I don’t think anybody would have assumed it would happen here. We knew it could happen, but nobody thought it would.”

According to campus officials, a male student began stabbing people just before 8 a.m. in front of a building that houses humanities and natural sciences classes, among others. Five people were wounded in all, two of whom had to be airlifted to the hospital, said UC Merced spokeswoman Lorena Anderson. Four of the victims were students, she said.

Police shot and killed the attacker on a pedestrian bridge — the sole access from the school’s dining area and parking lot to classes.

“The crime scene is the whole center of campus,” Anderson said. It’s the length of a city block, she added.

Garcia-Ceja had a morning class at the Classroom and Office Building, where the stabbings are believed to have occurred. He described it as a large lecture hall with a mixture of classes.

He usually comes to class an hour early to study for quizzes but slept in on Wednesday. He would have been at the building had he followed his normal routine.

Garcia-Ceja said the campus was largely on lockdown and that students were buzzing about the stabbing, that small groups of people were clustered on campus, talking about it, trying to figure out what had happened. Like many others, he turned to social media to try and get updates, but there was a lot of confusion this morning, he said.

Garcia-Ceja graduated in 2014 and said there was a stabbing on campus a few years ago, that it was believed to be gang-related. He was at a friend’s dorm when a student ran past, bleeding. The school had shut down campus and the suspect was apprehended, but there wasn’t a lot of talk about it afterward.

The elder Garcia-Ceja said the campus is very open and that it’s easy to access it whether you’re a student or not.

“We were told our campus was safe, that security was everywhere, but no one really knew. … We were under the impression that we were always safe, but when that incident (the prior stabbing) occurred, we understood that maybe we should take more serious precautions.”

School officials closed the campus Wednesday and have offered counseling to those who need it and shuttles for people who need transportation. It was not immediately clear how many victims were students or who the attacker was or what their motivation could have been.

“I can tell you that we’re really shocked and saddened by this,” Anderson said. “We’re doing everything we can to contact family and parents to make sure everyone here is safe and secure.”

Copyright 2015 Los Angeles Times

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