Professor killed in UCLA murder-suicide was brilliant, kind and caring, colleagues say

UCLA students went to school Wednesday expecting to take on routine end-of-school-year tasks: final exams and presentations. But those concerns were forgotten around 10 a.m., when cellphones buzzed to life across campus, announcing that a shooting had taken place. 

Within minutes, thousands of students found themselves racing for cover, building makeshift barricades against classroom doors that wouldn’t lock and arming themselves with anything they could find as information about the gunfire — some of it rumor about a wave of assailants — spread across campus via text messages and social media.

In the end, it was a murder-suicide involving two men inside an engineering building near the campus’ south side, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said.

Several sources identified the victim as William S. Klug, 39, a father of two who studied the interaction between mechanics and biology. 

Klug, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was described as both brilliant and kind, a rare blend in the competitive world of academic research, colleagues said.

“I am absolutely devastated,” said Alan Garfinkel, a professor of integrative biology and physiology who worked with Klug to develop a computer generated virtual heart. “You cannot ask for a nicer, gentler, sweeter and more supportive guy than William Klug.”

Melissa Gibbons, one of Klug’s former doctoral students, said he was an exceptional mentor. She recalled that Klug noticed another student struggling in his finite element modeling class and asked Gibbons to tutor  her. “He didn’t want to see her fail. To care that much in an undergraduate class says a lot about his character,” she said.

Klug, an El Segundo resident who was married with two young children, loved surfing and frequently took his family to Los Angeles Dodgers games. He earned his undergraduate degree in engineering physics from Westmont College in 1997, his master’s degree in civil engineering at UCLA in 1999 and his PhD in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2003.

With school shootings so often in the news in recent years, many UCLA students feared that the situation unfolding on their normally serene campus might evolve into something far deadlier.

"It's unfortunate it happened here," said Andrew Avelino, 23, a senior majoring in history. "You see school shootings happening on the news at high schools, on other campuses, at other places.  But you never thought it would happen here until it does."

The wave of panic and adrenaline, slew of campus alerts and swarms of police were all too familiar for Jeremy Peschard. The 22-year-old geography major transferred to UCLA from UC Santa Barbara, near where a student’s rampage left six people dead and 14 injured in Isla Vista in 2014 .

"It's crazy to go through this again," said Peschard, who said he experienced flashbacks of the attack as he hid inside a UCLA office. "It's sad that it's normalized at this point. It's like I almost know the drill."

Wednesday’s shooting took place inside the university’s engineering complex in a small office, according to Beck, who confirmed at a noon news conference that the shooter was one of the two dead men.

“The campus is now safe,” he said.

Authorities had not identified the gunman, and a motive was not immediately clear. Andy Neiman, the LAPD’s  chief spokesman, confirmed a note was found at the scene, but investigators had not determined whether it was connected to the shooting.

Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz, whose district includes UCLA, said LAPD officers had told him

that they initially feared that the two dead men were the first victims of an active shooter, Koretz said.

"We're at a point in this country where there's some kind of small massacre every day, somewhere," he said.

The campus was locked down for about two hours, ending around 12:05 p.m. Classes were canceled after the shooting but will resume Thursday, the university said.