SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Police at California State University, Sacramento shot a man on campus Wednesday after another man was beaten during a fight in a student dormitory and later died.
Campus officers responding to reports of a disturbance found one man lying injured on the floor and another man who charged them with a knife, campus police chief Dan David said.
Officers fired only after the man refused to back off and after they used pepper spray, David said.
“The subject kept coming at the officers with a knife, and it appeared they had no other choice than to do what they did,” he said.
Paramedics treated the man with gunshot wounds and the man who had been beaten, possibly with a baseball bat. Both were taken to hospitals, and the beating victim was pronounced dead.
Meanwhile, Sgt. Joe Green said 19-year-old Quran Jones was taken into custody at a hospital. Jones’ condition is unknown.
Campus police said they shot knife-wielding Jones after he charged at them inside the dormitory.
Sacramento State University police confirmed both the victim and attacker were students.
“We don’t know the motivation for this crime right now,” Sacramento police spokesman Sgt. Norm Leong said.
University officers were called at 2:10 p.m. to investigate a person causing a disturbance Wednesday afternoon at the American River Courtyard, a dormitory that opened this fall.
Students said someone knocked out a window; then, they heard a door slam.
The person who died possibly had been attacked with a baseball bat, Leong said. He was found on the floor of a room inside the residence hall.
