UC Berkeley sophomore Cody Barcikowski had been in a third-floor computer lab at the Haas School of Business for 15 minutes when he heard an angry voice repeatedly order someone to lower his gun, followed by four or five gunshots from an adjacent lab.
Barcikowski dived under a table and was quickly herded out of the room by staff.
“It was really surreal,” he said.
Christopher Nathen Elliot Travis, 32, was identified Wednesday as the man shot and killed by a UCPD officer Tuesday afternoon after brandishing a gun at officers. Campus officials have confirmed Travis was an undergraduate transfer student in his first semester at the school.
In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, UCPD Capt. Margo Bennett said the suspect had been carrying a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, registered in his name in San Jose, Calif.
“He was carrying a weapon, the weapon was real and the weapon was loaded,” said campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof.
At the press conference, Bennett provided a more detailed description of the shooting than had been previously offered. According to Bennett, police officers walked down the center aisle of the computer lab toward Travis — located with the help of a staff member at the school — who looked up, saw the officers and pulled the gun from his backpack. Travis then pointed the gun at the officers. After Travis refused to comply with multiple orders to lower the weapon, one officer shot Travis.
Bennett said an autopsy conducted Wednesday morning showed multiple gunshot wounds on Travis’s body. She added that Travis did not possess a concealed weapons permit.
Nine other people were present in the room at the time of the shooting, three of whom were “in the line of fire,” Bennett said.
According to UCPD Lt. Alex Yao, Travis was still conscious after being injured. Police officers attended to his medical needs before an ambulance took him to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where he died Tuesday evening.
Mogulof said the notification of Travis’s death to his family took place in Lodi, Calif.
According to Bennett, since Tuesday UCPD has spoken with several individuals close to Travis — including family members and former roommates — who reported “indications of unusual behavior” in Travis in the weeks prior to the incident.
“We’re trying to put together the whole puzzle,” she said.
Bennett said the incident had to have been carried out by a “troubled” individual.
Josh Keller, a reporter from the Chronicle of Higher Education, captured a screenshot of a website written by a man matching Travis’s physical description and age. On the website — which has since been taken down — the man marketed himself as a teacher and speaker who had overcome two suicide attempts and was in the process of returning to school to focus on his education.
“I want to learn more and do more to make this world better,” the website read. “I want to be remembered as someone who would never give up.”
In a promotional video for AlliedBarton Security Services, Travis’s former employer, Travis was described as an individual “motivated by purpose in his personal life.” According to the video, Travis aspired to receive an internship with the United Nations and pursue a career in international business.
In an email sent to the Haas community Wednesday, Dean Richard Lyons said the school will increase the security presence in the buildings and review possible long-term enhancements for the security system.
“What happened yesterday only hurts,” he said in the email. “But there is meaning in our community. I encourage you to find support and reassurance in each other in the coming days and weeks as we seek to make sense of this tragic event.”
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We have heard mostly one side of the story – that of the police – so of
course it seems like their actions were reasonable. And, the police
shot to death the most important other witness – Christopher Travis.
As to the former police officer who commented “If you brandish a firearm
at a police office, you will be shot.” We should be glad that he’s a
former officer rather than a present one. That’s a laughably false
statement. Any number of reasons would require an officer to hold fire
or even retreat in the face of a someone brandishing a
weapon…especially in a crowded situation like here (there were three
people in the line of fire according to the police) where shooting could
put the safety of others at great risk.
The fact is that this student was peacefully working in the computer lab
for quite some time and almost certainly would have remained so but for
what the police did. There would have been no incident and no
killing. Even accordingly to the police’s own version of what
happened, Travis only retrieved his gun from his backpack when the
police confronted him in the computer room. Does that sound like
someone who’s posing such a danger that he needs to be shot dead? For
all we know, he could have carried his gun to school even day for
months…simply for personal protection on the way to and from school at
night.
The fact is that the police turned a completely non-violent situation
into a violent one with a tragic outcome. Instead of deescalating a
situation that they were responsible for escalating, the police choose
the ultimate level of escalation. Whether this was the result of
inadequate training, bad policy or poor personal judgment, we’ll likely
never know.
This is a case of mental illness. People with mental illness are not any more violent than people without mental illness, but they are more likely to kill themselves. Travis was clearly suicidal and wanted the police to shoot him, which is why he pointed the weapon at them without firing it. The University is responsible for not providing better mental
health education on campus to recognize signs of mental illness, which
were missed in this case. “family
members and former roommates reported ‘indications of unusual behavior’
in Travis in the weeks prior to the incident.” The signs were there, we failed to see them.
People should be grateful that this situation was handled prior to it becoming another Columbine Massacre, Virginia Tech Massacre, University of Texas Massacre, etc… Be thankful innocent students were not killed.
There is no evidence the student intended to massacre anyone. There is no evidence he “brandished” a gun other than the police officer’s conclusionary statement. This students was shot “multiple” times resulting in “multiple gun shot wounds” from which,, not surprisingly, he died.
I see a law suit coming against the police for negligence for example. Police officers are trained to shoot a firearm in places where the person will not die like your hand, your leg, etc. You do not fire your weapon and use the student for target practice.
Police officers are NOT trained to shoot for “your hand, your leg, etc.” Police officers ARE trained to shoot for the center of mass (ie: upper chest or torso) because it is the biggest target and most effective at subduing a threat. The hand, for example, is too small of a target, and thus there is a higher chance of missing (especially in situations like this). What if that bullet hits another student or ricochets? What if the student with the gun then turned to fire on either the officers or other students?
I agree that there’s been no evidence to suggest he planned on massacring anyone, but to say that the officers used the student for “target practice” is completely inappropriate. The situation remains that he was in a room with other students and police officers and refusing to drop his gun (that we now know was loaded) despite being told multiple times to do so. The officers responded to the situation responsibly.
He put himself in the position he was in by bringing a gun to campus, and into a computer room with staff and students. No one used him as “target practice.” And police officers are not trained to shoot for a hand or leg.
If he had killed other students before the UCPD stopped him you would be claiming they did nothing to stop him.
What kind of evidence in addition to bringing a loaded gun onto campus, and into a computer room do you need? The lives of innocent students?
You should be thanking the UCPD!
And not to mention that the UCPD Officer’s that were put in the position to protect the students, our sons and daughters, will unfortunately have to live with the fact that in their career of protecting the public, they now are forever affected by the steps they had to take.
As a former police officer, you are NOT trained to shoot at limbs, legs etc., you are trained to shoot at center mass at least twice. You are trained to STOP the threat. I also see a lawsuit, due to standard procedure with the lawyers out there. At this time, there does not appear to be any negligence on the officer’s part. If you brandish a firearm at a police officer, you will be shot. Please get your facts and legal issues together, before posting.
Anyone who owns a gun should be shot to death by the police.
Gun ownership is WRONG.
Guess you never heard of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution with gives person the constitutional right to bear arms? The reason our forefathers wanted to write this in our Constitution was we had the experience of the British army having guns shooting people and the common people could not carry a firearm.
This made people nervous because the People were outnumbered when it came to firearms and the “authorities” had all the guns. So imagine today’s Berkeley police being the British army and you may understand why you have the right to carry a gun.
Now whether you, as an individual, choose to carry and/or purchase a firearm is a different issue but you have the right to do so if you choose.
so sad, ucb band is playing their hearts out trying to rally school spirit, but this weeks directives and actions by its leaders , makes it so painful obvious how they really feel about the students.
So prior to the time that the police arrvied, apparently the only crime Travis had committed was possibly concealed carry of a gun that was legally registered to him. He had the gun in his backpack prior to the time the police approached him. For all we know the police were instructing him to drop the gun, which is why he retrieved it from his backpack…which is what the police called “brandishing” the weapon. This seems like unnecessary escalation by the police of what could have been a minor event or non-event. And, we’ll never hear the suspects point-of-view because the police killed him.
any particular reason the cops needed to fire so many shots? especially knowing that it was a cal student, albeit a very troubled one, i wish they had more closely adhered to the “shoot to disable” approach that i believe most officers are taught
Any time a police officer discharges his/her firearm, the intention is to kill somebody. That is why you never almost never hear of somebody surviving a police shooting. There is no such thing as “shoot to disable”. With any weapon short of a handgun they probably would have tased the guy, but wave a gun at a cop and your odds of survival are extremely low.
This is a perilously naive comment. 4-5 shots is the average number of shots fired when a police officer uses his gun, there’s nothing exceptional about that number. And what “shoot to disable” approach are you talking about? There is no “shoot to disable” approach. Police officers carry guns as weapons of last resort–their purpose (the guns) is to be lethal. Cops are taught to aim center mass, and shoot to kill. Why? Because as people who have fired a gun before, unlike you, have discovered that shooting someone in the hand or shoulder is pretty damn difficult under highly stressful conditions, and that missing makes the situation worse, not better. You know, crazy unthinkable things happen that no rational person could conceive–like one of 9 innocent bystanders getting hit by the stray shot from the officer or the virtually guaranteed return fire by the suspect. Your complaint is ignorance defined.
Do you have any cites that indicate 4-5 shots is the average number of shots fired when a Police Officer uses his gun in this type of situation. That average is not indicated in this multi year study of shootings by Portland Police.
VOLUME OF SHOTS
“There is a strong
relationship between the volume of shots by police and the probability
of killing the suspect. In 17 incidents in which police fired three
times or less, only two persons died. In 12 incidents in which four or
more shots were fired, nine persons died.
Most of the deaths resulted in
“bunch shootings” involving two or more officers. There were seven of
these, five of them ending in death.
- There appears to be a
relationship between the amount of ammunition a weapon holds and a
tendency to shoot more. Twelve officers firing six-shot revolvers fired
an average of 2.6 times each. Nineteen officers using semiautomatic
pistols with capacities ranging from eight to 18 rounds shot an average
of 4.6 times apiece.”
http://www.theppsc.org/Archives/DF_Articles/Files/Oregon/92-Oregonian_Study.htm
Firing off five rounds in a classroom with nine to fourteen other people inside, depending on which account, tremendously increases the chance of a bullet ricocheting and hitting one of the other people. From the accounts I have read, he did not have the gun out till the police advanced on him and he never fired it. It seems as if the Police were very close to him so the chance of hitting him with one or two shots at close range would be very high. More shots than that would endanger everyone else from deflected bullets. Even if the average were 4-5 shots, is that the average in very close quarters, probably not. Does that average include times when Police are involved in shootouts and are opening fire to give cover to another officer. The probability of hitting him in the arm in which he was holding the gun, at close range, is going to be much higher than say for instance he was across the street, particularly with four officers present as backup.
“Nineteen officers using semiautomatic pistols with capacities ranging from eight to 18 rounds shot an average of 4.6 times a piece.”
I’m not sure what gun UCPD carries, but it’s probably either 9mm Berettas or Glock .40 pistols, like most other police departments in the country. In any case, it holds more than 8 and less than 18 rounds. Therefore, your statistic did what exactly? Prove me dead-on right. Congratulations.
Do more research and you’ll find the average distance an officer is standing from the suspect at the time of the shooting is around 6 feet. Cross-street shootouts are for Hollywood. They’re very, very rare. The goal of the officer is and shoot be to take the suspect down, completely and immediately, to prevent harm to himself and others. And if you think it’s easy to shoot someone in the gun arm at 6-10 feet when your life is under threat, I’d advise you to try it. You’re every bit as ignorant and naive as the original poster.
” i wish they had more closely adhered to the “shoot to disable” approach that i believe most officers are taught”
um, no, they are not taught that at all. Police officers never fire their weapons unless they are in a situation which justifies deadly force, in which case they shoot to kill.
maybe the guy was tired of the brutality and felt like standing up for everyone by exercising his 2nd amendment right (which we have been robbed of).
What are you even talking about? It’s obvious you’re upset about police brutality, but there’s no evidence that the gunman was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vML31zI45k
can someone please verify that this video, the one mentioned in the article, is actually an official release from Allied Barton? it was not uploaded by them, but by the “Forbisher Group,” which is Chris Travis’ creation.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForbisherGroup
http://forbishergroup.com/
nobody seems to have actually watched this video and/or thought about it. the information it contains and the manner of presentation seem highly unlikely to have come from Allied Barton. As Chris was a self-avowed “computer nerd,” his making the video himself, as a clever imitation of an “official” Allied Barton video, is quite possible. In summary: Allied Barton might have given the award, or not…. and they might have made the video, or not… and some/all of the other information on the video might be real or it might be Chris’ delusions.
Chris’ Forbishergroup website says he’s going to teach the lessons taught by Dale Carnegie and J Paul Getty *to you*, and this seems delusional. Both men wrote best-selling self-help books many decades ago. The Forbishergroup website also talks about promoting oneself via Youtube videos, in two separate posts. I am surprised that everyone is just reporting so matter-of-factly regarding the video(!) It talks about a guy who “finally decided to get a job, any job” and so took one with Allied Barton. Is that company really going to publicize their hiring an at-the-very-end-of-their-rope type of person? For a thousand other reasons, it does not seem like an official Allied Barton material. It may have very little basis in reality, just like Chris’ business model as expressed on his webpage.
Please, DailyCal reporters, get the scoop on everyone else by really watching this video and then asking some questions about it.
nobody is even reading the previous comment, certainly nobody is going to “like” it, but things would be at an entire different level if this guy Chris Travis was making bogus videos promoting non-existent awards (or awards for which there was no video & he therefore felt that significant recognition had not been forthcoming)… think about it, as in Jared Loughner, Patrick Bedell, etc…
I heard it was an iPhone, not Android.
until i see video showing that this person had a gun, or hear some testimony from eyewitnesses, i’m going to be skeptical about this story. isn’t it odd that we haven’t had a single quote from an eyewitness to the gun? isn’t it odd that they haven’t produced an image of the gun? i’m not saying there’s definitive proof of a cover-up, but i do think we should be cautious about believing this story. cops lie all the time. they lie reflexively after unjustified shootings. ..
Wow…it appears I spoke to soon. We still have someone so pathetically self-righteous and narcissistic that he’s flailing around in the dark for some explanation other than that someone far more brave and heroic than he will ever be shielded fellow human beings from harm.
If this story was talking about a police officer who needlessly murdered a student, and we hadn’t heard from any of the eyewitnesses yet, you wouldn’t be saying ANYTHING AT ALL about “remaining skeptical,” because this isn’t about a taste for evidence, it’s about categorical prejudice against cops. You are extraordinarily selfish and dishonest.
I’m pretty sure any time you speak it’ll be too soon for my liking.
Aren’t you making a prejudice assumption yourself (perhaps a to a smaller degree than OP) here:
“If this article was talking about a police officer who needlessly murdered a student, and we hadn’t heard from any of the eyewitnesses yet, you wouldn’t be saying ANYTHING AT ALL about “remaining skeptical,”
Y u prove OP’s prejudice by employing prejudice?
I could have just done this instead:
“I’m not saying there’s definitive proof of a cover-up, but I do think we should be cautious about believing this story. Cops lie all the time. They lie reflexively after unjustified shootings.”
He states explicitly that his skepticism is derived from his prejudice against police officers. He could have easily said he wanted to remain skeptical until we knew all the facts and left it at that. But he didn’t. Because truth doesn’t interest him. Having his bigotry vindicated interests him. I don’t have to stuff any words in his mouth whatsoever.
Oh, and to the OP, saying there’s no “definitive proof” of a cover-up implies that there’s ANY AT ALL, which there ISN’T. I reaffirm that you are extraordinarily selfish and dishonest.
Note how none of the people insisting he had an android phone rather than a gun, or that he was trying to hand the gun over at the time he was shot, have anything to say now. That’s right, guys–it’s conceivable to be a police officer and not be a murderous scumbag. Shocking. If you guys had any dignity at all, you’d go find the people who just kept all of us safe, and apologize personally for trying as hard as possible to frame them as fascistic sociopaths let loose on an innocent victim.
I still want to see the video.
If the headline of this article was “UCPD guns down innocent student,” would you still want to see the video? Hell no. As far as you’re concerned, the police are guilty by definition. You don’t care about evidence, you care about vindicating your own bigotry.
very sad event to happen on the Cal campus…. I am a Cal Mom of a alum 2010. It’s tragic to lose anyone in the Cal family….
Is there a reason for highlighting the fact that he was a transfer student? It was even in a title yesterday that read “Gunman identified as transfer student.” All students at Haas are transfer students btw, but that’s beside the point. That’s all.
You are an idiot and could not possibly be more wrong. I am a Haas student, not a transfer but a Haas student nonetheless. I was there when it happened. You have no grounds to make the statements you did. While I am a continuing student I have great respect for and friendships with many of the transfer Haas students.
Don’t hop on the Internet and make ignorant-ass insulting comments.
WTF the hostility? Weirdo.
so mad
Calm down dude
LOL U MAD BRO?
Shouldn’t you have a goatee?
Shouldn’t you have a shut the fuck up dickface?