Campus police kill unarmed graduate student with ‘superhuman strength’

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Saturday evening it took seven minutes and three Cal State San Bernardino police officers before their struggle with 38-year-old graduate student Bartholomew Williams was over, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Williams was shot and killed by the San Bernadino police after officers responded to a complaint of disturbance.

During the struggle with police, Williams grabbed an officer’s baton after he showed no effect from the officers’ hits to his body and used the officers’ pepper spray against them, said a spokesman for the San Bernadino Police Department.

Williams exhibited “super-human-type strength” during this whole ordeal, according to police.

Two of the officers fired at Williams after he wrestled the third officer to the ground and began kicking him in the head and torso, said spokesman Lt. Paul Williams.

“This became a prolonged, violent struggle,” the spokesman said.

The officers were responding to a dorm staff member complaint that Williams was allegedly behaving irrationally. Upon confronting Williams in the hallway upon their arrival, officers determined that he was a threat to himself and others. The officers tried to arrest Williams, but were unsuccessful.

Family members of Williams told police he suffered from a mental disorder and had stopped taking his medication.

Williams enrolled in the school in the summer of 2011 and was pursuing a master’s degree in educational instructional technology.

“This is a tragic day for the Cal State San Bernardino community,” university President Tomás Morales said in a statement. “Words cannot express how truly saddened we are at this time. We extend our deepest sympathies to his family, and our thoughts and prayers go out to all who knew him.”

Follow Marquise Francis on Twitter @mKfly