YouTube campus shooting ends with suspect dead, three hurt

[SAN FRANCISCO] A woman shot and injured at least three people before killing herself at Google's YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, police said.

San Bruno police chief Ed Barberini said the victims were transported to local hospitals Tuesday afternoon. The woman found at the scene appeared to be dead of "a self-inflicted" gunshot wound, he said. No motive was given for the shooting.

Sepand Parhami, a YouTube software engineer, said he was having lunch on an outside patio when he heard shots and saw what looked to be a woman moving from a garage to the lobby of the building. He scrambled for the door and went inside as the woman started shooting, he said in an interview after the incident.

Police said they received multiple emergency calls beginning at 12.46pm local time. Two minutes later officers arrived on the scene and encountered people escaping from the building. They began a search and found someone with gunshot wounds, according to Mr Barberini.

As the search continued they found a second person, a female, with what appeared to be a self-inflicted fatal gunshot wound. Police then found two more people with gunshot wounds, he said.

Zach Vorhies, a YouTube software engineer, said he saw a man on the ground with an apparent gunshot wound to the stomach. The victim was a heavyset man lying in the courtyard outside the building, Mr Vorhies said in an interview. Mr Vorhies said he then saw a police officer coming in with an assault rifle and ran out of the building through a rear exit.

Vadim Lavrusik, a product manager at YouTube, wrote earlier on Twitter that he and coworkers were barricaded inside a room at the 901 Cherry Ave headquarters, before later tweeting "Safe. Got evacuated. Outside now."

"Our security team has been working closely with authorities to evacuate the buildings and ensure the safety of employees in the area," Alphabet Inc.'s Google said in a statement.

"We advised all other employees in the Bay Area, and people with meetings scheduled, to stay away from the area, and that there is no need to take any action. We have provided employees a helpline."

The Stanford Health Care Center expected patients from the shooting, according to a hospital spokeswoman. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, which has the city's major trauma centre, said they had received patients from the incident. Hospital spokesman Brent Andrew declined to provide numbers of patients or release information on the condition of those admitted.

The victims at San Francisco General were a 36-year-old man in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition, the New York Times reported.

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene. US President Donald Trump, in a tweet, said he was briefed on the shooting and offered his "thoughts and prayers" for everyone involved.

San Bruno is a city 11 miles south of downtown San Francisco which is adjacent to San Francisco International Airport. The city has been the home of YouTube, the world's largest online video site, for more than a decade. It unofficially marks the beginning of Silicon Valley and is also home to a major Walmart e-commerce office.

A Google employee at a nearby complex to the YouTube office said several police sirens were heard around the office and that colleagues inside of the building are texting them updates.

Videos and photos posted to Snapchat show police officers running into the YouTube offices. People were also seen evacuating the offices in a line with their hands up in the air, according to the videos. Television reports showed police officers patting down people who had left the building to check for weapons.

Across the nation, the gun control debate has gained increasing attention, both from voters and legislators, in the wake of the February mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Congress recently bolstered the federal background check system for gun purchases as part of a larger spending bill and an additional report clarified that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could study the causes of gun violence. Additional measures have been passed at the state level.

Throughout modern American history, most mass shooters have been men. An FBI study of active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2013 found that only six such cases, or 3.8 per cent, involved a female shooter. Among the 160 shootings the study focused on, 23 occurred in business environments, and in 22 of those, the shooter worked for or had worked for the company targeted. Two of those shooters were women. In 40 per cent of the total incidents studied, the shooter committed suicide.

BLOOMBERG