Cal State Fresno shooting leaves 1 dead, 2 injured

A student at Cal State Fresno fatally shot one man and wounded two others in a dispute over a video game console, police said Tuesday.

Despite a cordon of more than 50 Fresno police officers that converged within minutes of the incident late Monday at a student housing complex just off campus, the alleged gunman managed to elude police. Accompanied by an attorney, he surrendered outside a friend’s apartment shortly before noon Tuesday.

Jonquel Brooks, 19, a criminology student who had played basketball at Hayward High School, was in touch with police, his parents and his lawyer during intense negotiations Tuesday morning.

His demeanor on the phone was “very calm” and reflected some remorse, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said at a news conference.

When Brooks turned himself in, he had shaved off his dreadlocks and changed his clothing, apparently in an effort to disguise himself, the chief said.

The incident prompted instant comparisons to the mass shootings at Virginia Tech last month, but officials described the Fresno attack as a spontaneous outburst rather than a calculated killing. Unlike the Virginia Tech massacre, which left 33 dead, the Fresno shootings were not acts of random terror, police said.

Four young men had confronted Brooks in his apartment in an argument over a PlayStation game console when he pulled a handgun and started shooting, police said. One of the men was uninjured.

Authorities believed that Brooks was probably hiding within the University Village apartments, so they combed the complex for more than four hours.

Several hundred residents bedded down in a campus dining hall. Within two hours, a psychologist was conferring with students who were anxious or agitated.

Many elected to stay at University Village, a collection of three-story buildings just across from the university’s Bulldog Stadium. Throughout the night, SWAT team members knocked on every door, checking for the possibility that others had been harmed or taken hostage.

The dead man was identified by police as Brant Daniels, 19, a former Cal State student who was last enrolled in 2006.

Paige Ricks, 19, a journalism major from Pittsburg, Calif., was up late working on a paper when she heard the shots. A friend of Daniels, she said he was “just a sweetheart -- the kind of guy who always had a smile on his face, the kind of guy who’d go out of his way to say hi.”

Police identified the two wounded men as Cal State Fresno student Roderick Buycks, 19, and Drew Pfeiff, 22, who is not enrolled at the university. The two men were treated and released from a hospital.

As news spread of the shootings, the school fielded phone calls from concerned parents around the nation and in countries as far-flung as Argentina and Japan. Officials offered students who had fled their apartments late Monday night the use of cellphones to call home.

The campus remained open Tuesday. Although police acknowledged that they did not know exactly where the alleged shooter had fled, Chief Dyer said they were confident that he was not on campus. He would not elaborate.

“At no time were students on campus at Fresno State in any danger,” Dyer said.

Still, some on Tuesday chose not to attend class.

“I would have canceled classes,” said Aaron Jones, 28, a marketing major who served in the Marines. “In light of the situation at Virginia Tech, I’m not about to put myself in that danger.”

In a statement e-mailed to students, faculty and staff members Tuesday morning, university President John D. Welty called the incident “a senseless tragedy that affects all of us in the university community, especially with the memories of the Virginia Tech shootings so fresh in all our minds.”

In an interview, Welty said that he and other senior administrators arrived on campus shortly after the attack. He dispatched a university vice president to the hospital where the wounded students were being treated, and ordered that a phone tree developed for emergencies be put into action.

He said students are planning a memorial observance.

eric.bailey@latimes.com

steve.chawkins@latimes.com