Ventura College ends campus lockdown after gun scare

The 16-year-old suspect was apprehended by police around 10 a.m., about an hour after he left the 13,500-student campus, said Ventura Police Sgt. Jack Richards. A loaded .45-caliber handgun later was recovered on campus, officials said.

Authorities did not release the suspect's name because of his age. He is a student in the local public school district and was booked into Ventura County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of carrying a loaded handgun on a school campus, Richards said.

College officials closed the campus as a precautionary measure, said college spokeswoman Alison Moore. A continuation school on the campus also was locked down, as well as a nearby high school and middle school in the Ventura Unified School District, Richards said.

At least two Ventura College students reported seeing the young man with the firearm and a magazine in the cafeteria, Moore said. He did not make any threatening statements, she said: "He was just showing it off is my understanding."

A student witness said the suspect took off on a bicycle.

Students and employees at the college were notified of the situation and were asked to remain in their classrooms until 1 p.m., Moore said. After the suspect was in custody, the lockdown was lifted, she said.

The community college campus in the city's suburban east end has had few brushes with violence. The last was a gang-related stabbing in the campus library in 2005, Moore said.

But a spate of gun violence on school campuses in recent years has prompted authorities to move quickly to lockdown whenever a threat emerges, Richards said.

"It's a lot of precautionary stuff," he said.

catherine.saillant@latimes.com