Skip to content

Alleged gunman shot by UC Berkeley police was a student,

BERKELEY, Calif. — A student shot by police on a U.S. university campus after brandishing a loaded gun near other students died at a hospital hours later, a university spokesman said Wednesday.

BERKELEY, Calif. — A student shot by police on a U.S. university campus after brandishing a loaded gun near other students died at a hospital hours later, a university spokesman said Wednesday.

Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis, 32, had just started his first semester at the University of California, Berkeley and had been attending classes at the Haas School of Business, spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

No one else was hurt, and Mogulof said there was no evidence to suggest Travis had any intention of harming others.

Bill Travis, the man’s father, sobbed during a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in California. He said he learned his son had been shot Tuesday night and didn’t wish to make any further comment.

It was the first shooting since the 1980s on the Berkeley campus, police said.

University officials said a staff member first saw a man carrying what appeared to be a gun in an elevator at the business school Tuesday afternoon. The staff member called police, saying she saw the man remove the gun from a backpack.

Police officers tracked him into a Haas computer lab. He raised the loaded gun and an officer shot him, roughly five minutes after the initial call, according to the school.

At the time, four students were between the officer and the man, UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said Tuesday. None of the students was hurt.

The university issued a campus alert to students shortly after the shooting, saying “everything was under control.”

Mogulof said Travis was taken to an Oakland hospital, where he died later Tuesday.

Classes were held as scheduled Wednesday, and school administrators issued a statement directing students where to find their belongings left behind in the crush of the evacuation.