Cop Shoots Gunman Near Berkeley Protests

As students and demonstrators began to gather at the University of California at Berkeley yesterday, a police officer shot an armed man inside a business computer lab on the other side of campus. Police say the suspect, who was taken to a local hospital for surgery, was shot after he "pulled a firearm out of his backpack and displayed it in a threatening manner" in a lab with four students present, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Police aren't sure whether the man is a student or whether he is connected to the Occupy Cal demonstrations that drew thousands of protesters to the campus yesterday, the Daily Californian reports. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau told a press conference that the "extraordinarily upsetting" incident was the first shooting incident on campus since the 1980s, when a football player was shot outside a campus pub. "Now we are there, along with Kent State and Virginia Tech," he said. (More campus violence stories.)