By Khalida Sarwari, Rachel Purdy, Melissa McRobbie
A shooting in a San Jose State University parking garage on Tuesday night left three people dead, including the shooter, a school spokeswoman said.
The shooting happened at about 8:30 p.m. in the 10th Street garage at the corner of East San Fernando and South 10th streets.
Police responded and found that the shooting had occurred on the fifth story of the garage.
Two people were pronounced dead at the scene and the third died later at a hospital, university spokeswoman Pat Lopes Harris said.
“They were able to determine that this was an isolated incident involving three individuals and that the campus was not at risk,” Lopes Harris said.
An initial message was sent out over the university’s internal public address system, and was later followed up by an alert sent to students via text message, Lopes Harris said.
The names of the people who died have not been released, and Lopes Harris declined to comment on a possible motive for the shooting or whether any of the three were students.
“Our first priority this morning will be addressing the needs of our students,” Lopes Harris said.
The garage was closed for several hours after the shooting, but at least partially reopened shortly after midnight, she said.
Many students said they first learned what had happened through social networking sites.
Freshman Cindy Baez said she found out about the shooting through her Facebook news feed.
“People were talking about it on Facebook,” Baez said.
Baez, who lives off-campus, said she received an email and text notification from the university that the garage had been reopened but that the message mentioned nothing about a shooting.
Baez’s friend, Lupita Barragan, also a freshman, said she hadn’t received any word from the school.
“People are always on their phones,” Barragan said. “It would have been nice to send a text message or something.”
Carmen Shiu, a junior, said she understands that the school wanted to be careful not to send out inaccurate information, but she would have wanted to know sooner.
“I’m not surprised that I found out on Twitter first, but I was just kind of shocked because the news said they sent out text messages,” Shiu said. “How come I didn’t get it?”
Junior Jennifer Cardona said she received a text message with few details.
“That makes me mad. They should have let us know,” Cardona said, adding that she didn’t want to come to school today and was concerned about the safety of her 4-year-old daughter, whom she dropped off at an on-campus child care center this morning.
Tristan Coleman, also a junior, said a friend notified him about the shooting as he was driving to the campus to study Tuesday night.
He said he doesn’t feel any less safe at school today.
“For the most part it’s a safe campus. They can’t prevent everything,” Coleman said.
The San Jose Police Department is assisting with the investigation, and sent two homicide detectives and a crime scene investigator to the university Tuesday night, police spokesman Officer Jose Garcia said.
Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call the San Jose State University Police Department at (408) 924-2168.