UC Merced student attacker ID’d in stabbing

SAN FRANCISCO – A freshman student who stabbed four people at a California university meant to do even more harm, but he acted alone and had no connections to terrorist groups, authorities said Thursday.

The four victims, including two students, one staff member and one construction worker, are all expected to recover, the university said.

“Meanwhile, we have brought in resources from across the University of California system to provide counseling to our students, faculty and staff. No one in our campus community has been untouched by this tragic event”.

The other student and a university staff member – who suffered a collapsed lung in the attack – remain hospitalized.

Mohammad’s plan for revenge was found on his body during an autopsy Thursday, Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said. Price was a construction worker and among the first to respond to the attack His father Jim, who owns a construction company that was doing work on campus, said his son looked Mohammad right in the eye before being stabbed in the side while trying to stop the attack. Warnke said in a news conference on Thursday that Mohammad’s backpack included a handwritten list of items to collect. Officials recovered all but one of the listed items – scissors.

“There was absolutely nothing they could find to indicate anything other than his being a college student at UC Merced”, Warnke said, adding the attack was the result of “personal animosities”.

“UC Merced’s Twitter timeline showed students who took Fresno State up on the offer, with messages like “#BobcatStrong #GoDogs”, a reference to both schools’ mascots, and another with a photo of UC Merced students holding “Go Dogs!” signs in support of Fresno’s players. “His plan went haywire because people fought back”.

Warnke said that 20 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and the Department of Homeland Security combed through the student’s computer, and found nothing to reveal a dark, criminal past.

“That was a pretty disturbing thing to watch”, Price said. The district had counselors available in the Wilcox High School office Thursday “for any students and staff that need help processing this information”. He was shot dead by campus police after a foot chase, officials said.

UC Merced Chancellor Dorthy Leland said: ‘At this point, it would be irresponsible to draw such conclusions based exclusively on the ethnicity of the suspect. He said Mohammad was smart and got good grades. He then ran down a flight of stairs and stabbed another student and a student adviser, police said.

The group was for the class he started the attack in on Wednesday morning. Price’s co-workers drove him to Mercy Medical Center where he was treated and later released. He says he was shocked to hear Mohammad was involved in the stabbings.

Velasquez says Mohammad would ignore him if he tried to talk to him and never walked to class with anyone.

Merced County Sheriff SWAT members enter the University of California, Merced campus after a reported stabbing in Merced, Calif., Wednesday, November 4, 2015.

The school with more than 6,600 students is about 120 miles south of Sacramento in the farm-rich San Joaquin Valley. He lived in the city of Santa Clara before moving into campus housing, according to the university.