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Scott Pribble,
police spokesman for the university’s Boulder campus, told
reporters that authorities were notified shortly after 9 a.m. of
a confrontation involving a man with a large knife near the
school’s football stadium.
"There was some kind of an altercation in the parking lot"
before the suspect went inside an athletic department building,
Pribble said.
Officers from both the city of Boulder and campus police
departments confronted the suspect in a stairwell and shot the
man after he did not comply with repeated orders to drop the
blade, Pribble said.
The man, who has not been publicly identified, died from his
wounds, police said, adding no one else was injured in the
incident.
The Boulder Camera newspaper, citing an unnamed source close to
the investigation, reported the suspect appeared to be “a
religious zealot” and was overheard saying he was “looking for
sinners.”
CU-Boulder Police Chief Melissa Zak declined to confirm the
newspaper’s report and would not comment on what the man said
before or during the confrontation with police. Zak said a city
of Boulder officer and a campus officer both fired on the man.
The shooting took place inside the Champions Center, a building
adjacent to the football stadium that houses athletic department
offices and training facilities. The university’s nationally
ranked football team was practicing on a nearby field when the
shooting occurred.
The person who encountered the man in the parking lot was a
patient receiving treatment at the clinic, police said.
Campus police sent out text alerts warning students, faculty and
staff to “take protective action” after reports surfaced of the
armed man, a university spokesman said.
Classes and other activities resumed at the 32,000-student
campus after the all-clear was given about 25 minutes after the
incident was reported, police said.
Hours later, police rushed to the campus student center after
receiving apparently unrelated reports of an active shooter
there, but that incident was later determined to be a hoax, the
CU police department said on Twitter.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Dan Whitcomb
and Peter Cooney)
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