Daily Bruin Issues Correction, Trashes Tweets After Describing UCLA Gunman As 6-Foot-Tall 'White Male'

WESTWOOD (CBSLA.com) — The Daily Bruin, UCLA's official school newspaper, issued a correction Thursday for describing the shooter in a murder-suicide on campus as a six-foot-tall "white male" before authorities ultimately determined Mainak Sarkar was the gunman.

In a statement issued around 1:30 p.m. on the paper's Twitter page, The Bruin acknowledged that it had "tweeted descriptions of the shooter that ultimately proved incorrect".

According to the statement, the Daily Bruin staff relied heavily on police scanners for information as the shooting unfolded, "a source that can often be unreliable".

"Throughout the rest of the lockdown and the school day, we reported only what we confirmed with law enforcement and UCLA officials", the statement added.

COMPLETE COVERAGE: UCLA Shooting

The inaccurate tweets - including a second one that cited police as describing the suspect as "wearing a black jacket and black pants" - have since been removed from the Bruin's Twitter page.

The gunman was officially identified Thursday as 38-year-old Mainak Sarkar, an Indian-American grad student who is believed to have fatally shot professor William Klug before killing himself.

While the Daily Bruin acknowledged shortly after 10:30 p.m. Wednesday - nearly 12 hours after the shooting was first reported - that its description of the shooter was "early" and had "not been confirmed by authorities", some criticized the paper's seemingly delayed correction.