The People's Record

Texas A&M shooting leaves three dead, including shooter
August 14, 2012

The shooting that took the lives of three people began Monday afternoon when a county law enforcement official arrived at the home of Thomas Alton Caffall to serve an eviction notice.

Caffall, 35, allegedly opened fire on County Constable Brian Bachmann, 41. Shots were exchanged, leaving Bachmann, Caffall and another man dead near the campus of Texas A&M University.

Just after noon, College Station police began fielding frantic 911 calls about gunfire in the neighborhood near the university’s football stadium. Responding officers found Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann shot on the lawn of the house.

For nearly 30 minutes, police exchanged shots with Caffall as a neighbor, a former Army medic, waited with frustration for the all-clear so he could tend to the injured constable.

Bachmann, a police instructor, one-time Officer of the Year and a married father of two, had been mortally wounded. So was Chris Northcliff, 43, of College Station, who was outside and apparently caught up in the gunfire.

Caffall too was shot and later died at a hospital.

Police wouldn’t speculate on what sparked the shooting and it wasn’t immediately clear who shot whom.

“We’re trying to make some sense of this,” College Station Assistant Police Chief Scott McCollum said.

Source

Just a bit of context: The A&M shooting is the third major US shooting in less than a month. 

By the numbers:

268: people shot in the United States every day.
97,820: people shot in the United States every year.