The suspect was described as a white male between the ages of 25 and 30 years old and was believed to have been wearing all black and a ballistic vest, Seabrooks said. She said that police are "not convinced 100 percent that the suspect who was killed operated in solo or a lone capacity."
Police are about "90 percent certain" that the campus has been cleared of any additional suspects, Santa Monica College Police Chief Albert Vasquez said at the 4:30 p.m. press conference. One person of interest was arrested and is in custody.
Three female patients were receiving care at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said a hospital spokesperson to The Huffington Post. One of the female patients died of abdominal gunshot wounds, Dr. Marshall Morgan, chief of emergency medicine at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said at a press conference at 3:30 p.m. PST. Another female patient was in critical condition and in surgery. The third female patient was in serious but stable condition.
Three other people were being treated at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica. They were all being treated for non-critical injuries relating to the incident but none of them were shot, Dr. Morgan said.
California Highway Patrol spokeswoman Officer Kerri Rivas walked HuffPost through the timeline of Friday's shooting from the point of view of the CHP.
- 11:55 a.m.: CHP began receiving multiple phone calls reporting a man dressed in black standing on a street corner. The reports varied in description: witnesses described him as either fully armed, holding a shotgun or holding several different weapons.
- 11:59 a.m.: CHP started fielding calls that the gunman was actively shooting at a bus and that there were injured parties inside the vehicle (See a photo of the bus with gunshots). At that point CHP officials were able to confirm with the Santa Monica Police Department that they had an active shooter on their hands.
- 12:17 p.m.: Santa Monica College students heard screams and shots being fired inside the library.
- 1:29 p.m.: SMPD confirmed they had one shooter in custody. From then on, the department began the process of containing and clearing the entire campus in search of other victims and suspects.
- 2:11 p.m.: At the time of HuffPost's call, authorities were continuing to clear the campus. The process could take several hours.
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1:03
A Santa Monica College student described the gunman in an interview with the Associated Press. From AP:
Jimes Gillespie, 20, told The Associated Press he was in the college's library studying when he heard the gunfire, and he and dozens of other students began fleeing the three-story building.
"As I was running down the stairs I saw one of the gunmen," said Gillespie, who described the shooter as a white man in his 20s, wearing cornrows in his hair and black overalls. He said the man was carrying a shotgun.
Gillespie believes there were two shooters because he heard two kinds of gunfire – a shotgun and a handgun – but only saw one person.
"The shotgun blast was first. It was either him or the partner who shot eight to 10 handgun shots," Gillespie said. "Then after I saw the gunman I heard more shots and I ran out of the library through the emergency exit."
As Gillespie ran away across campus, he said he saw a car in front of the English building that was riddled with bullet holes, had shattered windows and a baby's car seat in the back.
An arson and explosives team was on its way to the library after reports that the shooter left bags in the building, ABC7 tweeted shortly after noon. Photos on social media reveal that a SWAT team is on scene near the campus.
The college issued this statement about the incident:
There have been reports of a shooter on the main SMC campus. The college is on lock-down. This means that if you are on campus, stay out of open spaces, stay in doors, lock all doors and do not open the doors until you receive an all clear from college officials. If you are off campus, do not come to campus.
As a precaution, the Santa Monica Police Department put all Santa Monica public schools on lockdown at 12:15 p.m. PST. Superintendent Sandra Lyon released a statement asking parents and caregivers to wait for official word before coming to schools to pick up their children.
President Barack Obama was about three miles away from the scene at a Democratic Party fundraiser. He was scheduled to deliver remarks around 12:30 p.m. PST. The Secret Service says the President's trip was not impacted by the shooting.
"We are aware of the incident and it is not impacting the visit," said Secret Service Spokesman Edwin M. Donovan at the time. "It’s a local police matter at this point."
The college is in the midst of final exams. All finals scheduled on the main campus for Friday and Saturday will be rescheduled, the college said in a statement. The school is providing on-campus counseling for students and employees throughout the weekend and next week as well as 24-hour hotline support.
Santa Monica College is a two-year community college with approximately 34,000 students. The 38-acre college is open-campus and less than two miles from the beach. The school opened in 1929.
Story is developing...
gunman dressed in black killed at least six people in a string of shootings
through the seaside California town of Santa Monica on Friday before he was shot
dead by police in a community college library, law enforcement officials said.
At least five other people were wounded, one of them critically, in the shooting
rampage that unfolded when the suspect used an AR-15 assault rifle, police said.
As the gunman lay dead on a sidewalk outside the Santa Monica College library, a
second individual was taken into custody near the campus and described by police
as a "person of interest" in the case.
The killing spree marked the latest in string of high-profile mass shootings
over the past year, including a December attack in Connecticut that killed 20
children and six adults at an elementary school and a shooting last July at a
suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people.
Those attacks have helped re-ignite a contentious national debate over gun
violence in America that spurred Obama and his fellow Democrats nationwide to
push for expanded background checks for gun buyers - an initiative defeated in
the U.S. Senate.
Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said the shooting rampage began
east of the college campus shortly before noon when police received multiple
reports of a house fire, a carjacking and shootings in the area.
The bodies of two people were discovered at the fire scene and four more bodies
were found at two other locations between the burning home and the college,
police said. The two bodies found in thehouse are believed to be the brother and
father of the suspected gunman, law enforcement sources told The Los Angeles
Times.
Police don't have a motive for the shootings. The shooting and fire appear to
have stemmed from some type of family dispute, but the sources said police are
still are from sure what happened.
Santa Monica College remained closed. And police were converging on an apartment
in Mar Vista as part of the shooting investigation.
The gunman has not yet been identified, but police described him as being 25 to
30 years old.
Three women who were shot, one of whom was found in her car outside the
burning home, were rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where one later
died.
A neighbor, Janet Carter, told Reuters that she heard five to seven shots come
from the home, followed by two more rounds. Carter said she went outside and saw
a woman who had been shot in the driver's seat of her car.
PURSUED ON CAMPUS
The overall death toll from the violence was at least seven, including
the gunman, who was not identified by authorities but was described as a
man between the ages of 25 and 30.
Police traded gunfire with the gunman outside the college and pursued
him into a library, where he was shot and killed, Seabrooks said. The
sequence of events was under investigation and authorities had no known
motive for the rampage.
Earlier, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol told Reuters
that officers received a report of a man armed with multiple weapons,
including a shotgun, firing at passing cars and a bus at two locations
near the college campus.
Students at the campus library described a scene of pandemonium as the
sounds of gunfire rang out, sending some scurrying for cover.
One student inside the library, Cyrus Jabari, 19, said that through a
window he could see a man dressed in black with a buzz-style haircut
carrying what appeared to be an assault rifle.
"The only thing between me and him was a glass door," he told Reuters.
Another witness told a CNN affiliate that he saw a man drive up in a car
near the campus, walk into the middle of an intersection with a gun, and
open fire at passing vehicles and a building before "he jumped back in
the car and took off."
"It seemed like he was alone in his car," said the witness, who was not
identified by name. The witness said that he took cover under the
dashboard of his car, which was struck by gunfire. "I saw him jumping
out of the car. He had a big, black gun in his hand and he just started
blasting maybe 10 rounds from the left to the right."
Reuters and The Los Angeles Times contributed.