I was giving a presentation at UCLA in a building adjacent to the site when it happened. Was locked in for about 3 hours. It's so weird when it happens to you. Victim was a professor of Engineering. The assailant fired at the professor inside his office then took his own life. A suicide note was found. Just sad.
I had a friend who was on campus at the doctor's office there. Had to sit there and watch as dozens of S.W.A.T. teams drove past. Scary stuff. I figured it was someone who had cracked under the pressure. Bad day...
Yeah it was intense. I was very impressed with the LAPD/FBI/DHS response however. They responded to an active shooter alert (reports were inconclusive at first) and the response was amazing. Westwood Blvd. was lined with literally hundreds of law enforcement, hundreds of police cars, unmarked FBI vehicles, motor-cops and more. They took it very seriously and their training for these kinds of incidents proved useful. It was good to know that had this guy been out on the loose, there was no way in hell he'd get away with it. Props to law enforcement for executing and keeping us safe.
I'm curious as to the history of the shooter... Such a tragedy, senseless violence to these kinds of people sickens me. Props to the police response, and my buddies down there said that the ucla students were super cooperative which made everything super smooth. Glad you guys were okay too. Def not a situation you wanna be in
I finished classes last quarter, if I didn't, I would have for sure been in that building at the time it happened. ME major here, it's week 10 the week before finals.... I also had that professor but only as a sub for a couple weeks. What a tragedy...
It appears the gunman was a disgruntled former acquaintance of the professor. The gunman thought the professor had stolen his intellectual property. Now here comes the crazy part: the gunman was found with a suicide note/kill list. They followed his list back to his home Minnesota where they found another dead woman who was on the list. The gunman apparently killed her, then drove to UCLA to kill the professor. There was another UCLA professor on the list as well, but that professor is still alive.
Glad you're safe. Terrifying stuff. I've been at two schools where there have been incidents like this - FSU (library shooting, I wasn't close) and UCF (shooting in a dorm at night). Scary even from a distance.
Found out the 2nd professor was off-campus for meetings. If he wasn't he likely would've been killed too. If they can prove that the woman was murdered by this guy - case closed. He's a deranged guy (not that he isn't already). Almost disturbingly - today is National Gun Violence Awareness day.
In the building where most of my classes were and I'd be in the building next door if I hadn't quit my job a few months ago. Still got some friends in that department. Scary stuff. Crazy how fast misinformation spreads in a panic like this though. Was hearing from some friends still in school that there were these rumors of multiple shooters and multiple deaths while everything was going on. The news picked up on some of that stuff too, and it was sad how they almost seemed to want that to happen so it'd be a bigger news story. Once they found out that it was a simple murder-suicide, they switched over almost immediately to the story about the gorilla killed in the zoo.
Welcome to America...where guns are welcomed and where shootings happen. I'm not sure what needs to happen for greedy politicians to finally stop caring about the industry lobby and just do whats right.
