California IN BRIEF : BERKELEY : Mental Health Officials Questioned
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A city councilman running for mayor said he will seek full disclosure of what mental health officials knew about the gunman who killed one person and injured seven at a bar near UC Berkeley last week before being killed by police. “You want to try and find out if there’s something we could have done which could have prevented this catastrophe; learn from it and identify other people we are treating who could possibly be involved in something like this,” Councilman Fred Weekes said. Alameda County mental health officials said they referred Mehrdad Dashti, 30, whom they described as a paranoid schizophrenic, to Berkeley city mental health officials. But Berkeley officials--citing state confidentiality laws--have declined to say if they treated Dashti, let alone if he showed signs of violence. Dashti, an Iranian immigrant, took more than 30 hostages in Henry’s pub in the Durant Hotel a block from the university Thursday.
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