UC Merced attacker identified; few details known about his life

Faisal Mohammad.

The name answered many UC Merced students’ main question about Wednesday’s violence on campus. The name was trending on social media Thursday morning.

At the smallest University of California campus, with fewer than 7,000 enrolled, the students are close-knit and consider each other family, and many say, “everybody knows everybody.”

But few on campus knew the 18-year-old computer science student’s name until he stabbed four people and was shot dead by university police on Wednesday.

Those who did know Mohammad before the stunning violence said he resisted making friends, but still appeared lonesome.

He was described by various people as “intelligent,” “quiet,” and “friendly”; as both shy and not shy; and by law enforcement as “an angry teenager.”

Nancy Arreola, also an 18-year-old freshman, lived two doors down from Mohammad in the Tuolumne dorm. She tried talking to Mohammad a couple of times, but described him as reclusive.

“He was always studying in his room,” she said. “He prayed a lot. I don’t think he had a lot of friends. He seemed lonely.”

Arreola also had class with one of Mohammad’s roommates, Andrew Vasquez, who she said was shocked by Wednesday’s events.

“We don’t know what caused him to do this,” she said. “I wish we could have helped him before this.”

Thinking out loud, the freshman from Perris in Southern California wondered what would cause a college student to do what Mohammad did.

“I wish we would have had his perspective to know why he did everything,” she said.

Mohammad graduated in June from Wilcox High School in Santa Clara County.

A high school friend was shocked to hear what his friend had done.

“He was quiet, but he was really friendly,” Ish Patel said. “He was intelligent, too – he performed well academically.”

Patel said Mohammad enjoyed basketball, going to the mosque to pray and playing video games with his friends. He lost contact with Mohammad after they graduated.

“I’m definitely shocked,” Patel said.

But UC Merced freshmen Karishma Singh, Jallil Macera and Patricia Kaye also described Mohammad as anti-social.

“It wasn’t that he was shy,” Kaye said. “He’d just push people away.”

The girls said many times during group project meetings, students will linger after the work is done to chat and hang out. But not Mohammad. “He would say, ‘Can I go now?’ ”

Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke insisted Mohammad’s actions were not related to a terrorist group or Islam. Mohammad was an “angry teenager,” he said.

Arreola had one word she used to describe the whole thing: “Sad.”

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 7:47 PM with the headline "UC Merced attacker identified; few details known about his life."