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news:
Building evacuated,
woman detained
By Jeanne Hoffa
Online Forty-Niner
University Police
physically removed a young woman in handcuffs from the Human
Services and Design Building on lower campus Monday about
6 p.m.
Two police cars
raced through the center of campus to the scene. Officers
crouched outside of the windows and doors of the building.
Within 15 minutes, seven women ran out of the back door, ushered
by police. Most of them exited the doors of the Center for
Career Studies office.
The women, some
of them in tears, huddled outside and answered Cpl. Sherwin
Burgos' questions while he wrote down their identification.
They refused to
share details with a reporter, alhough one had said that they
had been in a hostage situation. Another referred to the woman
inside as an employee. One assured another that she was wise
to have jumped out of the office window.
The rest of the
building was then evacuated. Many who left had no idea what
was going on, only that they were not allowed to enter the
building. Graphic design major Thai Dao was working at his
computer when he was asked to go outside.
"Police called
my name, and told me I had to leave," Dao said. "I
asked him, why. And he said, 'Because there is a crisis over
there.'"
Within a short
time, Cpl. Amy Rzasa and University Police Capt. Stan Skipworth
were awkwardly maneuvering a rolling office chair out of the
side of the building. Slumped in the chair, almost motionless
and in handcuffs, was the petite woman, her long, dark hair
covering her face. The police officers spoke gently to her,
reassuring her, as they moved her to the back of a waiting
police car.
Skipworth said
that the woman was mentally disturbed
"We received
a call of a disturbance, that there was an emotionally distraught
woman," Skipworth said. "We found the individual
in the building speaking incoherently. We are taking her in
for psychiatric evaluation."
Officer Patrick
Banks, dispatcher for the Cal State Long Beach Police Department,
said he had no evidence that a weapon had been used.
"There was
obviously some incident, people felt she was disturbed, or
not all there. But maybe for some reason they feared for their
safety. Anything beyond that I do not know."
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