According to the University of California, Los Angeles' Police Department, UCLA was put under lockdown after a possible shooting was reported on campus Wednesday morning. Witness reports suggest the shootings happened near the Engineering IV building and Boelter Hall. Students received texts and emails from the university's BruinAlert notification system, advising them to "Go to secure location and deny entry (lockdown) now!" Campus media relations officer Rebecca Kendall spoke on behalf of the University, confirming there were two shooting victims. Their conditions have not yet been reported. Update: At around 11 a.m. local time, the LAPD said the two people have died. An hour later, around noon, the Los Angeles Police Chief confirmed that the shooting was a murder-suicide.
The school's newspaper, The Daily Bruin, went on to publish a tweet describing the alleged shooter as a 6 foot tall white male wearing all black. According to a report by local news station KTLA, one eyewitness claimed the shooter was a student, but that has not been confirmed by authorities. In response, the city of Los Angeles launched into city-wide tactical alert and the entire campus remains under lockdown.
CNN senior law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes explained that the situation is especially difficult to handle, given the university's busy location. Engineering Building IV, where the shooter had been reported to have been near, is in an especially populated part of the city of L.A., which has a population of about 4 million people.
As of 2014, the school, situated on a 419-acre-piece of land near the Santa Monica mountains, had a total enrollment of 43,239 students.
The Los Angeles Times reported that authorities searched for the shooter, who has yet to be identified, by scouring each and every room on the large campus. The publication pointed out that the same system was successfully used immediately after the San Bernardino shootings occurred in 2015.
This is the first time in 26 years that a shooting has occurred on the UCLA campus. In February 1990, a man shot two UCLA Medical Center workers, killing one and wounding the other. Officials reported then, as well, that it was the first homicide on campus grounds in 20 years. The latest shootings happened just a week before students' final exams for the spring session.
This story is developing...
