San Bruno police were searching Wednesday night for the shooter who opened fire on an 18-year-old man at Skyline College earlier in the day, apparently striking him in the buttocks or lower back.
The gunman and three accomplices ran from the campus after shooting the man one time at about 1:30 p.m. following some type of fight in a parking lot at the school, said Cmdr. Mark Catalano of the San Bruno Police Department.
Squelching speculation that the shooting could be an attack similar to last week’s pipe bombing at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Catalano said the shooting was isolated and there is no indication that the suspects came to the school to hurt other students or staff.
The injured man was taken to a hospital, where he was being treated Wednesday night for a nonlife-threatening injury, authorities said. It was not immediately clear if he was a student at the college, but several witnesses said he was carrying a backpack when he burst into a school building and shouted, “I got shot!”
While police did not say where the man was hit, several witnesses who saw him being loaded into an ambulance said he was shot in the buttocks or lower back. Witnesses said they heard three to five shots.
School was canceled for the remainder of Wednesday and today. The district notified students of the decision through its e-mail and text alert systems, said Barbara Christensen, spokeswoman for the San Mateo Community College District.
Police locked down the school and evacuated the campus following the shooting.
Student Raydan Alhubaishy, 19, said he saw the shooter running away from the campus holding a silver semiautomatic handgun just moments after the shooting, which happened in parking lot 6, near the Pacific Heights building, according to Catalano.
Police said a group of six to eight young men were arguing or fighting in the parking lot before the shooting.
The man with the gun and three accomplices drove away north on Pacific Heights Boulevard in a fluorescent purple Ford Escort with paper license plates, according to police, who released only a vague description, saying the men appeared to be about 18 years old and were wearing jeans. Catalano said it is not clear if the men were students at the school.
