BERKELEY, Calif. -- A machete-wielding campus activist who was shot and killed Tuesday after breaking into a university chancellor's home was carrying a note demanding a halt to construction on nearby People's Park.
Police said the woman, Rosebud Abigail Denovo, 19, had a note in her dufflebag that called for an end to renovations of People's Park, a 2.8 acre lot near the University of California, Berkeley campus which has been the site of major demonstrations since the 1960s.
The note read in part, 'We are willing to die for this piece of land. Are you?'
Denovo was shot and killed early Tuesday morning after breaking into the campus home of Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien and his wife.
University police said the silent alarm home was triggered at 5:51 a. m. Tuesday. Authorities immediately surrounded the house while the chancellor and his wife locked themselves in their bedroom.
After entering the house and ushering Tien and his wife to safety, police confronted the intruder. Authorities said she was shot once in the hands and twice in the chest after lunging at an Oakland police officer with a machete on the second floor. She was also carrying a hunting knife.
Neither the officer nor the chancellor and his wife were injured.
Denovo had been arrested several times by university and Berkeley police during demonstrations last summer against the university's development of People's Park, which was 'liberated' by radical activists in the 1960s.
Activists opposed recent construction of a sand volleyball court in the park. The court was eventually completed last summer, but not before hundreds of people were arrested and Berkeley police used rubber and plastic bullets to quell protests on several occasions.
Last summer, Denovo and a friend were arrested on explosives-related charges after authorities discovered homemade explosive materials at a campsite in the Berkeley hills. Police also found a list apparently targeting university officials for attack. She was out on $10,000 bail.
David Beauvais, Denovo's attorney in the case, said his client was a unique and intelligent person and that Tuesday's incident was not out of line with her anarchist views.
'It was consistent with her political and philosophical views that revolution was necessary to overthrow the government,' Beauvais said. 'She was a unique human being and it is unfortunate things ended this way.'
