3 Confirmed Dead In Shooting Near Texas A&M Campus
COLLEGE STATION (CBS/AP) - A Texas law enforcement officer attacked as he brought an eviction notice to a house Monday was among three people, including a shooter inside the home, killed Monday near the Texas A&M University campus.
A 65-year-old man also died, while three other law enforcement officers and a 55-year-old woman were wounded, in the shootings at an off-campus home not far from the university's football stadium, College Station Assistant Police Chief Scott McCollum said.
Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann had gone to a home with an eviction notice just after 12 p.m., McCollum said. Police say Thomas Alton Caffall, 35, opened fire on Constable Bachmann. Caffall's family say they are "distraught by the havoc that he has caused."
Officers responding to calls describing an officer down saw Bachmann wounded on the ground in the front yard, then got into what McCollum described as an extended shootout with Caffall, who eventually was shot.
Both Bachmann and Caffall were later pronounced dead at a hospital. Officials did not say where the other man who died was shot or why he, or the woman who was wounded, was at the home.
The woman had surgery Monday afternoon, and one of the injured officers was being treated for a gunshot wound in the calf, McCollum said. Two other officers sustained non-life-threatening injuries not from gunfire, but McCollum would not say how they were hurt.
The shootings prompted Texas A&M to issue an emergency alert warning students and residents to stay away from the area.
"We issued what's called a CODE Maroon, which is our emergency alert system, as a precautionary measure," explained A&M News & Information Services Director Lane Stephenson.
Most of the university's 50,000 students were not on the campus about 90 miles northwest of Houston because the fall semester doesn't start until Aug. 27, university spokeswoman Sherylon Carroll said.
"It appeared to be fairly quiet," Carroll said of campus. "It didn't appear to be a lot of people out and about at that particular time."
Officers, meanwhile, were dealing with losing someone McCollum called a respected colleague.
"Brian Bachmann was very close to everyone in law enforcement," McCollum said. "He was a pillar in this community, and it's sad and tragic that we've lost him today."
Bachmann worked more than 19 years in law enforcement, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. He started out with the Hempstead Police Department before spending most of his career with the Brazos County Sheriff's Office. He had been a constable since January 2011 after winning election to the post the prior November.
In a February 2010 candidate profile in the Bryan-College Station Eagle, the married father of two said he wanted to bring "constables back to the community" by actively patrolling neighborhoods to discourage crime.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, an A&M alumnus, said at an event in Florida that his "prayers are with any of those that have been injured." A&M President R. Bowen Loftin issued a statement calling Monday a "sad day in the Bryan-College Station community."
College Station is about 90 miles northwest of Houston.
The A&M shooting comes a week after a man was shot dead near the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. Other deadly school gun violence this year included seven killed at Asian religious vocational school in east Oakland, two graduate students from China killed near the USC in California, and three people wounded near Eastern Michigan University.
(©2012 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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