Suspect in UCSB South Hall Incident Taken Into Custody

Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department and UC Santa Barbara police announced today that a man taken into custody in Isla Vista Tuesday evening is believed to be the same person who sparked a lockdown and floor-to-floor search of South Hall on the UCSB campus on Monday afternoon.

UCSB police officers had responded Tuesday to calls of a suspicious person at various locations on campus. Police believed that individual to be the suspect in the incident at South Hall. At approximately 7:20 p.m., UCSB police and a Sheriff's deputy responded to a report of a suspicious man outside a UCSB sorority house in Isla Vista. The man was positively identified as the individual involved in the South Hall incident.

Officials determined that the man did not have lawful business on the property and he was issued a citation for prowling. Due to his comments and demeanor, the Santa Barbara County Crisis & Recovery Emergency Services was contacted and the man, who is a student at UCSB, was transported to their facilities for psychiatric evaluation. Police said that because he is being treated as a psychiatric patient, and has not been arrested, he will not be identified by name.

Meanwhile, campus officials announced that the UCSB Alert emergency notification system successfully delivered more than 270,000 messages to e-mail accounts on Monday, and more than 130,000 messages were delivered to cell phones. Several messages related to the event were sent. The UCSB Alert system now has more than 30,000 subscribers and campus officials noted that there has been an increase in subscribers since the incident on Monday.