Another day, another mass shooting in America. Details are sketchy.
CNN (“Multiple people shot near Texas A&M University“):
Police took a man into custody Monday after “multiple people” were shot near Texas A&M University, a police official said.
Several law enforcement officers were among the people shot, Rhonda Seaton of the College Station Police Department told CNN. She didn’t have information on how many people were shot or their conditions.
She said a person identified as the gunman was in custody. The shooting happened about one block from campus, Seaton said.
The university had warned people to stay away from the intersection of Welborn Road and George Bush Drive as well as part of Fidelity Drive in College Station, Texas.
AP (“Texas A&M: Active shooter on campus apprehended“):
Texas A&M University says a shooter has been taken into custody near its campus in College Station.
College Station police spokeswoman Rhonda Seaton tells CNN multiple people have been shot, including law enforcement, but she doesn’t know the extent of the injuries. Multiple calls to Seaton’s cellphone from The Associated Press have gone straight to voicemail.
The university issued an alert on its website just before 12:30 p.m. Monday warning of an active shooter near the campus football stadium, Kyle Field. The warning tells residents and students to avoid the area.
Seaton says the shooting happened within a block or two of campus sometime before 12:45 p.m. She says police have one suspect in custody.
More details as they emerge.
UPDATE: The Houston Chronicle (“Shooting near Texas A&M kills officer, civilian“) is reporting at least two dead.
Police say at least one law enforcement officer and one civilian have been killed in a shooting near Texas A&M University’s campus.
As a side note: I dislike the use of the word “civilian” to distinguish citizens from the police.
UPDATE 2: As more details emerge, this is looking less like the “mass shooting” that I described in the opener and more like an eviction gone horribly wrong. CNN:
A Texas constable and two others were killed Monday in a shooting near Texas A&M University, police said.
Rhonda Seaton, a spokeswoman with the College Station police department, told CNN that the three people killed were the constable, the man authorities say exchanged gunfire with law enforcement officers and an unidentified civilian.
A few minutes earlier, Asst. Chief Scott McCollum, from the same police department, told reporters that multiple people had been shot in the incident, which occurred around noon just a few blocks from the Texas A&M campus.
The dead included Brian Bachman, a constable in Brazos County, according to McCollum. According to his Facebook campaign page, Bachmann was a 41-year-old Republican from College Station who had been a Brazos County sheriff’s deputy since 1993.
A male civilian was also killed, the assistant police chief said. A post on the city of College Station’s official Twitter page identified this third victim as a “civilian bystander.”
Three others were injured in the shooting. They included two law enforcement officers, including one who was shot in the leg, and a female civilian who was undergoing surgery at a hospital, according to McCollum.
[…]
When law enforcement officers arrived at the scene, they found the constable down in the front yard of a home, according to McCollum. The new officers engaged the suspected gunman, eventually shooting him and taking him into custody, police said.
Officer Jason James, with the Bryan police department, said “there is a possibility that it was an eviction.” He pointed out that 911 calls began coming in after officers had arrived on the scene, rather than officers responding to a shooting that neighbors told them about.
“It’s not like a disturbance where they were actually dispatched to it,” James said. “They weren’t responding to a shooting, but it turned into one.”
A sad story but something other than the nutcase on a rampage story that has played out all too many times.
