YOUTUBE CHAOS
POLICE: WOMAN SHOOTS BOYFRIEND, OTHERS BEFORE KILLING HERSELF
SAN BRUNO, Calif. — A woman shot and killed herself after wounding her boyfriend and two other people with a handgun at YouTube headquarters yesterday afternoon, authorities said.
A law-enforcement source told the Bay Area News Group that the shooting appeared to have been fueled by a domestic dispute and that the suspect was targeting her boyfriend.
Officers and federal agents swarmed the company’s complex in the Bay Area city of San Bruno after receiving multiple 911 calls reporting gunfire.
Television news footage showed people leaving the building in a line, holding their arms in the air. Officers patted them down to make sure none had weapons.
The shooting left three victims “who have all been transported for gunshot-related injuries and we have one subject who is deceased inside the building who we believe to be the shooter,” said San Bruno police Chief Ed Barberini.
Barberini said police were called at 12:46 p.m. to the online video giant’s Cherry Avenue campus for reports of gunfire, and responding officers were met by a multitude of fleeing employees.
“It was very chaotic, as you can imagine,” Barberini said.
The chief said officers soon found a victim with a gunshot wound near the entrance, and soon after came upon the suspected shooter on an outdoor patio, dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. They eventually found two other shooting victims, and Barberini affirmed that there was no longer any active threat.
YouTube employee Vadim Lavrusik posted on Twitter that he heard gunshots and saw people running. He said he was barricaded in a room with co-workers before being safely evacuated.
Will Hudson said a friend who works for YouTube texted him about the shooter.
“I think there might be a shooter in my building,” one text read. “The fire alarm went off so we started to evacuate and then people (started) running saying there was a shooter.”
San Francisco General Hospital received three patients: a 36-year-old man in critical condition, a 32-yearold woman in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition, a spokesman said.
Trauma surgeon Dr. Andre Campbell declined to detail the victims’ wounds, but said none had undergone surgery as of yesterday afternoon. He added that the male victim’s critical status stemmed from blood loss.
Campbell told the San Jose Mercury News all of the patients are awake, and “shocked like we are.” He also lamented the occurrence of yet another multiple-casualty shooting, and added that gunshot victims are a regular instance at his hospital.
“We have a serious problem we need to address,” Campbell said. Another hospital, Kaiser South San Francisco, received a female victim who suffered a possible sprained ankle but was not shot.
Google, which owns the world’s biggest online video website, posted on Twitter that the company was coordinating with authorities.
Hudson said his friend made it safely back to San Francisco and was in contact with his family. Hudson said he’s become used to hearing about gun violence but has never been so close to it.
“It just feels strange. It feels like it could really be anyone. That’s really the strangeness of it,” he said.