UC Berkeley Lockdown Suspect ID'd: Report

BERKELEY, CA — A UC Berkeley student who made threats that led to Thursday’s campus-wide lockdown has been arrested, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Lamar Bursey, 32 of Hayward, was charged by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office with two counts of making felony criminal threats, according to the report.

Bursey is accused of writing threatening letters to university staff members that triggered the school’s first closure in more than 50 years.

Bursey had been placed on academic suspension in connection with an April 14 incident, the details of which were not made available, according to the report.

Bursey threatened to shoot two university staff members in an email he sent to multiple university staffers just before 6 a.m., according to court documents obtained by The Chronicle.

The email said: “Depending on who I feel was helping or not, 2 people on this email will get shot,” according to the report, which cites law enforcement sources.

Several employees told authorities they believed the threats to be credible.

The UC Berkeley campus was under shelter-in-place orders for around four hours Thursday after the university received what officials described as "credible campus-wide threat."

The campus reopened Friday, a day after the lockdown led to the cancellation of all classes and campus activities.

Authorities lifted the lockdown at around 1:40 p.m. after the suspect behind the threats was located, officials said.

The university’s handling of the situation has been called into question by a UC Berkeley professor in an op-ed published Monday in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Prof. William J. Drummond said Thursday’s lockdown illustrated that the university was inadequately prepared for active shooters, which is part of routine training in many campus settings.

He also questioned the decision to issue shelter-in-place orders when the person behind the threats was located off campus.

It is still not known who issued shelter orders, which is problematic, Drummond argues.

The dearth of information amid the lockdown fueled speculation, some of which was erroneous, which led to campus police issuing an alert less than an hour into the lockdown that said "there is NOT an active shooter on campus" after rumors floating on social media suggested that was the case.

"There were no updates throughout the incident. People locked in offices, classrooms and labs for hours on end had no idea what was happening," Drummond wrote.

"The Chancellor, Carol Christ, was not heard from until 5 p.m."

The UC Berkeley campus hadn’t been closed since 1970, when former Gov. Ronald Reagan shuttered all UC and CSU schools from May 6-10 in the aftermath of the Kent State University anti-Vietnam War protest in which the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a group of demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine.

Read more in The San Francisco Chronicle