5 people stabbed on US campus, suspect is killed

Five people were injured Wednesday in a stabbing incident on a university campus in north-central California before the suspect was shot dead, campus police said.

The University of California Merced Police Department said two of the victims were transported by helicopter to a local hospital, and the other three were treated on campus. It said that all victims were conscious, but it provided no conditions.

The Sacramento Bee newspaper identified the assailant as a male student in his 20s.

It said construction workers remodeling a campus building heard a scuffle in a classroom, and when one went to investigate, the assailant lunged at him and stabbed him. He was one of the three taken to a hospital.

There was no immediate information on the possible motives of the assailant.

It was not clear whether the other victims were students. Initially, the university said the victims were students but later backed off from that assertion.

The university, which opened in 2005 and has about 6,500 students, canceled classes for the day.

Source: AFP