UC Merced Stabbing: Suspect Apprehended After Injuring Multiple People: Report

UPDATE: 12:35 p.m. EST -- The UC Merced Twitter account confirmed that the suspect in Wednesday's stabbing was killed by police. Five students were stabbed.

UPDATE: 12:25 p.m. EST -- UC Merced police officers fatally shot the stabbing suspect Wednesday, the Merced Sun-Star reported. The county sheriff, Vern Warnke, told the newspaper the deceased was "a male student in his 20s."

Original story: The University of California in Merced canceled classes and went on lockdown Wednesday morning after a suspect reportedly stabbed multiple people. A tweet from the school, which has an enrollment of about 6,000, assured students that the suspect was in custody and there was no "active danger."

Fox 40 reported that four people were injured and one had been airlifted to the hospital. The incident occurred at about 8 a.m. PST. Students and local residents took to social media to express their concern about the situation.

In 2014, UC Merced reported only six crimes on campus property: one forcible sex offense, one burglary and four stalking cases, according to its annual security report. There was a single aggravated assault, which the police department identifies as "an unlawful assault upon the person of another that inflicts severe or aggravated bodily injury," on public property that year.

Mass stabbings are not considered to be as common as campus shootings, USA Today reported in 2013 after a student with a knife injured 14 people at Lone Star College - CyFair in Houston. At the time, an American criminology expert told the news outlet that there had been fewer than 10 mass stabbings -- in which four or more people died -- in public since 1901.