News Update

UC Berkeley student faces felony charges for allegedly making threats that caused campus lockdown

A campuswide  lockdown of UC Berkeley on April 21 that cost students nearly a full day of instruction was caused by a student who allegedly threatened to shoot campus staff members and who is now facing two felony charges in state court, the Associated Press reported.

Lamar Bursey, 39, of Hayward, was charged this week “with two counts of felony criminal threats after he allegedly sent an email to several university staff members saying that two of them would be shot if he didn’t get the help he needed,” according to the report. The university placed him on academic suspension.

Charging documents that the Alameda County District Attorney filed in Superior Court allege that Bursey sent an email just before 6 a.m. to several university staff members telling them he had slept outside the previous night and that they were “his resources.”

“I’ll be in the office from aprox 9am to 4pm today. Stop playing with me. Depending on who I feel was helping or not, 2 people on this email will get shot,” Bursey allegedly wrote.

The campus was locked down for more than four hours and classes were canceled for the day. Bursey was later found at a hospital in Oakland and arrested, court documents show.


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