They were both quiet, studious and polite young men, each the product of private religious Bay Area high schools who were staking out their futures at California State University, Sacramento.

But there were stark differences between Scott Gregory Hawkins and Quran Mahammed Jones, the two students at the center of Wednesday's campus tragedy.

Hawkins was a bookish 23-year-old junior who was devoutly religious and obsessed with history. He had never had a girlfriend and had not made many friends yet on campus, but he was close to his family in Santa Clara.

Jones was an athlete, a foster child from San Francisco who was taken in by parents devoted to helping inner city children. He had been gregarious and outgoing at high school, where he played on the football team and maintained a Facebook page showcasing his athletic prowess and his many friends.

Police say they still don't know what sparked the brutal outburst Wednesday inside the American River Courtyard dormitory suite the two had shared with three other students since August.

But they say Jones used a baseball bat to beat Hawkins to death.

He then turned on police responding to calls for help and charged at them with an 8-inch kitchen knife, police said. After a volley of pepper ball shots failed to stop him, campus police fired three times, wounding him.

Jones, who turns 20 on Nov. 6, is recovering at the UC Davis Medical Center and will face one charge of murder and one charge of attempted murder of a police officer when he is booked.

Suspect 'in his own world'

Friends and roommates described Jones as an athletic young man who was quiet and well-mannered. He enjoyed playing flag football on the lawn outside the dorms and pickup basketball games on the courts behind the dining commons, where he worked as a dishwasher.

"He was a quiet dude," said Marlon Kang, 20, who lives in the same dorm building. "He seemed like he would never hurt nobody."

Daniel Gengler, 20, played pickup basketball with Jones and described him as "mellow."

"Whenever I saw him he was by himself," Gengler said. Friends who'd known Jones longer say he was no longer as outgoing as he had been.

A Sacramento State freshman who went to high school with Jones in San Francisco, 18-year-old Alexis Garrett, said Jones "always had fun" in high school.

"When I got here, he seemed like a different person," she said. "He was real quiet. ... He looked like he was in his own world."

From her office overlooking the autumn leaves along the American River, a professor who had Jones in her astronomy class welled up with tears as she described the studious hard worker she knew. In a class of 150 students, Vera Margoniner said, Jones stood out.

"He wasn't playing around, he wasn't on his cell phone," she said. "He was in the first row, paying attention."

Jones was in Margoniner's office Monday morning asking how he could do better in the class, she said. He wanted extra assignments so he could practice more and was looking for physics tutors with expertise in astronomy.

"He seemed to be a very nice guy who wanted to better himself," Margoniner said. "(He) was trying to get somewhere in life."

Desirae Payton, a Sacramento State freshman, said she and Jones participated in a neighborhood program together while they were in elementary school in San Francisco.

They and other innercity kids received tutoring and went on field trips. Payton said Heidi Kilgore, one of the women who ran the program, took Jones in and later became a counselor at his high school.

Heidi and Kurt Kilgore, Jones' foster parents, declined several requests for comment Thursday, instead handing out a written statement at their San Francisco home, which was decorated for Halloween with pumpkins and lights.

"My wife and I are Quran's legal guardians," the statement read. "We found out last night about the tragic incident in which Quran was involved, and our family is devastated by the news.

"Quran has always been a kind, loving son, and this incident is not reflective of his true character. Our hearts and prayers go out to the Hawkins family as they cope with this awful tragedy. We would respectfully ask that the media let us grieve this situation within the privacy of our family."

Call The Bee's Sam Stanton, (916) 321-1091. The Bee's Gina Kim in San Francisco; Bill Lindelof, Anna Tong, Chelsea Phua and Ed Fletcher in Sacramento; and researchers Sheila A. Kern and Pete Basofin contributed to this report.