The Oikos University shooting occurred on April 2, 2012, when a gunman shot at people inside Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, California, United States. Within a few hours, the number of reported fatalities reached seven.

43-year-old One L. Goh, a former student at the school, was taken into custody and identified as the suspect in the shootings. Along with the California State University, Fullerton massacre, this was the third-deadliest university shooting in United States history, after the Virginia Tech massacre and the University of Texas Clock Tower shooting and the seventh-deadliest U.S. school massacre overall. It is also considered the deadliest mass killing in the city's history.

Details

The shooting happened at approximately 10:30 am Pacific Daylight Time on Monday, April 2, 2012, when a gunman opened fire with a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun with four fully loaded 10-round magazines on the university's campus, located at the Airport Business park in East Oakland, near the Oakland International Airport.

The suspected gunman, 43-year-old One L. Goh, stood up in a nursing classroom while class was in session, ordered classmates to line up against the wall, and fired at them. The gunman was reported to have said "Get in line ... I'm going to kill you all!" before opening fire, according to a witness. Seven were reported dead, and three others injured. The attacker continued to fire shots as he fled the campus, driving away in a car belonging to one of the victims. Hours later, he surrendered to authorities at a Safeway supermarket in the nearby South Shore area of Alameda, about five miles away from the scene of the shooting.

Suspect

The suspected shooter is 43-year-old One L. Goh (sometimes reported as One Goh Ko or One Ko Goh), a former student at Oikos University. He was residing in Oakland at the time of the attack. A native of South Korea, he followed his parents and two older brothers to the United States at a young age and later naturalized as a U.S. citizen.

When Goh arrived to the United States, he first resided in Springfield, a community in Fairfax County, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., and then moved to Hayes, in rural southwest Virginia, where he had minor traffic citations and debts. In February 2002 he changed his name from Su Nam Ko because he felt his birth name sounded "like a girl’s name."

Goh later moved from Virginia to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he took up residence in Castro Valley and in Oakland. His mother Oak-Chul Kim also lived in Oakland, while his brother Su-Wan Ko, an administrative non-commissioned officer in the United States Army, and another brother Su-Kwon remained in Virginia.

On March 8, 2011, Su-Wan was killed in an automobile accident in Virginia while on assignment for the George C. Marshall Center. Later that year, his mother returned to Seoul, South Korea, where she died as well. While a student at Oikos University, Goh had disciplinary problems, and was asked to leave the school a few months prior to the shooting.

Howard Jordan, the chief of the Oakland Police Department, said that Goh was angry at the administration after being expelled from the university, as well as having his request for a pro-rated tuition fee reversal on his $6,000 payment denied by Ellen Cervellan, one of the school's administrators. School officials later said he had not been expelled. Jordan said Goh went to Oikos with "the intent of locating [a female] administrator", but when learning she was not there, he opened fire at random people. Jordan said Goh "was also upset that students in the past, when he attended the school, mistreated him, disrespected him, and things of that nature."

Hearings

Goh was arraigned before Judge Sandra Bean of the Alameda County Superior Court on April 4 and charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but did not enter a plea at the time. In interviews, Goh apologized for the shooting, stating that he did not remember many parts of the day in question and that it was difficult for him to speak about it. He was also hospitalized, and began refusing to eat; three weeks after his arrest, county sheriffs reportedly considered the possibility of obtaining a court order to have him fed forcibly through a feeding tube. Goh later resumed eating, though he had lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg). On April 30, he appeared before Judge Bean again and entered a not guilty plea through his public defender David Klaus.

If convicted, Goh would be eligible for the death penalty under California law due to enhanced penalties for special circumstances which could apply to his case, including the commission of multiple murders and the commission of murder during a carjacking.

Goh's pre-trial hearing was originally scheduled for June 30. It was eventually held on October 1 before Judge Carrie Panetta. Klaus argued that Goh was not mentally competent to stand trial, and so Panetta ordered that the hearing be adjourned until November 16 so that a competency evaluation could be conducted. Goh used the services of a Korean interpreter during the hearing, and briefly disrupted the proceedings with an outburst when Klaus began speaking about Goh's mental competence.

The court appointed two psychiatrists to evaluate Goh. The hearing resumed on November 19 to discuss the report of the first psychiatrist, which was completed on schedule. According to Klaus' statements, that report concluded that Goh had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia for up to a decade and a half, and that he lacked the ability to cooperate with his public defender due to his incomprehension of the criminal justice system. The report of the second psychiatrist was not yet complete by that time, so proceedings were again suspended until January 7, 2013. Goh refused medication while in jail.

The second psychiatrist's report presented at the January 7, 2013 hearing also concluded that Goh suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. On that basis, Panetta ruled that Goh was unfit to stand trial, and ordered that he be confined to a mental institution for treatment, with further competency reviews to be held every ninety days. An additional hearing was scheduled for January 28, 2013. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley has not yet concluded whether she will seek the death penalty for Goh if and when he goes to trial.

Victims

Seven people were killed and three were injured.

Killed

Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, 38
Doris Chibuko, 40
Sonam Chodon, 33
Grace Eunhae Kim, 23
Katleen Ping, 24
Judith Seymour, 53
Lydia Sim, 21

Wounded

Dawinder Kaur, 19
Grace Kirika, 43
Ahmad Javid Sayeed, 36

Wikipedia.org

 

Details of Oikos University massacre tell of terror in Oakland

Henry K. Lee - Sfgate.com

September 17, 2014

The nursing students were quietly taking a test at Oikos University in Oakland when a rear door swung open and a former classmate burst through - one arm clamped around the school's receptionist, the other clutching a pistol.

"Everybody to the front of the class," ordered the gunman, One Goh.

Nobody moved.

"You guys think I'm f- joking?" Goh shouted.

It was April 2, 2012, and one of the Bay Area's worst mass shootings had begun.

Now, a 372-page transcript of witness testimony to a grand jury, obtained by The Chronicle, offers frightening details about the massacre, in which Goh apparently targeted a school director he was angry at - but who no longer worked there.

Within moments of interrupting the nursing test, Goh fired his .45-caliber handgun, fatally wounding the 24-year-old receptionist, Katleen Ping, despite having promised not to hurt her if she stayed silent.

And he kept firing with the gun he had legally purchased months before, killing seven people in all and devastating the small Christian school that sits across Interstate 880 from the Coliseum complex in Oakland.

The grand jury met in secret last month and heard from 14 witnesses over two days before indicting Goh, who has confessed to the killings, on a raft of charges including seven counts of murder.

But it remains unclear whether the case, suspended since January 2013, will ever go to trial. Goh, 45, is at Napa State Hospital being treated for paranoid schizophrenia, with his lawyer saying he saw faces in mirrors and experienced delusions regarding "the battle between God and Satan and his role in that battle."

Whatever Goh's motivation, the grand jury transcript paints a picture of a burst of violence that unfolded within five chaotic minutes.

Spray of bullets

The rampage happened in a nondescript office building on Edgewater Drive that housed the nonprofit college, which had about two dozen employees and 150 students - many of them immigrants - studying nursing, theology and Asian medicine.

Goh, who had dropped out the previous fall, took a BART train and an AC Transit bus to Oikos, where surveillance cameras captured him walking toward the campus at 10:27 a.m., police officers told the grand jury.

Among the 12 nursing students who were taking a test was Grace Kirika, 46.

She testified that Goh, dressed in a baseball cap, a blue jacket and khaki pants, entered the classroom through a back door with Ping, an immigrant from the Philippines who had a 4-year-old son. Her face was white and she was shaking, classmates recalled.

According to police, Goh had told his hostage not to scream, telling her that he didn't want to kill her. But he shot her anyway as he launched a barrage of gunfire.

"He just shot her, and we all - everybody started running," Kirika said.

Ping staggered back to her office and called 911.

Kirika, who was struck in one of her fingers and in her back, would survive gunshot wounds along with classmates Dawinder Kaur and Ahmad Sayeed.

But Kirika recalled that others, including 40-year-old Doris Chibuko - a native of Nigeria and mother of three whom she had pushed out of the room - weren't as lucky.

Other students scrambled out of the building. Some called 911, reaching dispatchers who were just a few blocks away on Edgewater Drive. The first calls came in at 10:33 a.m., with reports of shots fired and people wounded.

"Gunshots. Shots coming in from outside the building. People are running out screaming," dispatcher Jean Pannell testified, referring to a call she took over 911.

Rush to help victims

Oakland police Officer Richard Niven told the grand jury that he found Chibuko lying face down in a pool of blood. He checked her vital signs, found none, and rolled her over.

"I heard her gasp," Niven said. The officer said he gave her chest compressions for 10 minutes, to no avail.

Niven said he helped escort three women out of the university. One of them was "more visibly scared and shaken than I've ever seen before," and collapsed in his arms, telling him, "He's shooting. He's reloading and he's shooting."

Desks were flipped over, while backpacks and cell phones were left behind. One wall had a big oval impression in the sheetrock, as if someone had fallen into it.

Other officers brought out more victims - many who were found cowering in classrooms. Those who couldn't be saved were placed in the median of Edgewater Drive, a makeshift morgue.

Sgt. Michael Reilly, the department's most senior member of the SWAT team, testified that, as officers searched room by room, they heard a "very faint, almost moaning, or calling out basically for help" from Ping. She had been shot in the stomach.

Reilly directed two Oakland schools officers who had arrived to get Ping out of the building. They put her in an office chair and wheeled her outside, Reilly said. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Also slain were Lydia Sim, 21; Grace Kim, 23; Judith Seymour, 53; Sonam Choedon, 33; and 38-year-old Tshering Bhutia.

Killer's shame cited

Goh left the school at 10:32 a.m., stealing Bhutia's Honda. He drove 5 miles to the South Shore Shopping Center in Alameda, where he gave himself up in a Safeway after calling his father, who told him to surrender to police.

Before Oakland investigators Robert Trevino and Steve Bang read him his Miranda rights, Goh blurted out, "I think I killed four people," Trevino testified.

After being read his rights, Goh allegedly told police he had a plan - to kill Wonja Kim, who had been Oikos' assistant director of nursing, and then take his own life.

"He had thought that she let people harass him, and that somehow she led these people to hate him," Trevino told the grand jury.

Goh had apparently dropped out without a full refund of his $6,000 tuition payment. He suggested he left the school after complaining about cheating, and he made references to feelings of shame - that he worried about being "the laughingstock" at the school.

Gunman's story

Goh said "it wasn't anyone's fault" that he hadn't gotten the refund, "but they should have taken him more serious," Trevino testified.

The ex-student apparently had no qualms about gunning down multiple people, telling investigators, "I killed one, why not two?"

Goh, though, did have some misgivings, Trevino said.

The teacher of the nursing class, whom he called "Ms. Laura," was a "very nice lady" whom he spared as she hid under her desk. Goh told Trevino and Bang that "he had seen her hiding under the desk, and that he felt bad that she actually had to see what was going on."

Goh's gun, which he had bought at least two months earlier, was found several days later, discarded in a saltwater channel near Oikos, police Lt. Randy Wingate testified. Three empty magazines were found nearby in the muck.

The mass shooting could have been worse. The pistol had eight rounds in its 10-round magazine, and one in the chamber.

 

Oakland massacre gunman's boasts about violence revealed as relatives mourn students shot 'because they didn't do what he said'

• Gunman named as One L Goh, 43, a former nursing student

• Goh 'believed he was disrespected by younger students'

• Shot and killed six women and one man

• Students told: 'Get in line and I'm going to kill you all' before he opened fire

• Goh was thousands in debt and had two deaths in the family

By David Gardner and Rob Cooper and Meghan Keneally - DailyMail.co.uk

April 2, 2012

A professor who taught the suspect in a shooting rampage at a Christian college has revealed that One Goh used to brag about violence.

Professor Romie John Delariman met Goh, 43, at the beginning of his nursing course at Oikos University, a small Christian school in Oakland, California.

The professor said Goh repeatedly told a story about beating up someone who tried to mug him in San Francisco. Goh also added that when he was bored, he would go to the park and pick fights.

The tutor said Goh was one of his most eager students in the nursing program but that the 43-year-old felt disrespected and bullied by younger classmates.

Goh was arrested Monday on suspicion of opening fire at the college, leaving six students and a receptionist dead. Three others were also wounded.

Police believe that Goh had been looking for a female administrator who expelled him earlier this year, when he carried out his plan to 'inflict pain' on the school.

The coroner's office named the victims as Judith Seymour, 53, of San Jose; Lydia Sim, 21, of Hayward and 33-year-old Sonam Chodon of El Cerrito.

Grace Kim, 23, of Union City; Doris Chibuko, 40, of San Leandro and male victim Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, 38, of San Francisco, also died.

The school's receptionist Kathleen Ping, 24, of Oakland, was also shot and killed, her family said. She leaves behind her four-year-old son Kayzzer.

Her father told the New York Daily News: 'We have a very close family, and she loved the family so much. She was the heart of the family, she really was,” he said. “She was a great mom and a great daughter and a great sister. She was all three in one.'

Goh allegedly arrived at the school on Monday morning with a .45 caliber handgun looking for the administrator.

When he discovered that she was not in the building, he went into an acupuncture class and forced the students to stand up. He told them: 'Get in line and I'm going to kill you all.'

According to authorities, Goh opened fire when people would not listen to his instructions.

'Not everyone was cooperative, and that's when he began shooting,' said Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan.

Police said that none of the victims were the ones who teased Goh.

'He was upset that students in the past, when he attended the school, mistreated him,' Howard said.

'They disrespected him, laughed at him. They made fun of his lack of English speaking skills. It made him feel isolated compared to the other students.

'He was having, we believe, some behavioral problems at the school and was asked to leave several months ago.'

The suspect sprayed bullets randomly at his classmates before he went through the entire building systematically shooting people.

'Shots were fired throughout the building,' the police chief added.

Police have said that while Goh surrendered and has been cooperative, 'he hasn't been particularly remorseful'.

He was charged with seven counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, carjacking and kidnapping.


The kidnapping charge is because he brought the secretary from the reception area into the classroom where he shot her, and the carjacking stems from his decision to take the male victim's car and flee the scene.

The male victim was named as Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, an immigrant from the Himalayas who studied nursing and worked part-time as a janitor.

The younger brother of victim Lydia Sim said that she was a caring and independent girl who hoped to become a pediatrician.

Ms Sim, who was born in San Francisco, had only had one year left of nursing school before graduation.

'In the end, I know she's in a better place,' her brother Daniel told the local Hayward Patch.

'It's hard to believe she's gone. In the end, God has a plan and he needed her to come to him early.'

'She was such a loving person. She didn't deserve to go like that. She didn't deserve to die,' Mr Sim added.

Sonam Chodon, 33, was confirmed dead by an announcement from the Tibetan Association of Northern California.

Though the name of the female administrator who was his specific target is unknown, new details about Goh's home life painted a troubling picture.

The death of his mother and brother, along with his expulsion from school and mounting debt were seen by police as some of the possible motives behind Goh's decision to kill.

Police said the Korean-American suspect fired indiscriminately in a morning acupuncture class at the small private college in Oakland, which provides fellow Koreans with Christian-based training in theology, music, nursing and Asian medicine.

'We've learned that the suspect was upset with the administration at the school,' Mr Jordan told Good Morning America.

Goh fled the scene in the Honda Civic that belonged to the male victim, Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, and was arrested about an hour later in a Safeway shopping centre car park, several miles from the school.

Sargent Howard said Goh told officers he chose to drive to the Safeway because 'just wanted to get away from the area' as soon as he heard people calling 911.

He apparently handed himself in and confessed to a grocery store security guard he had shot several people.

The shooter was said to be a former nursing student who had been absent from class for months after being expelled.

One officer said: 'He clearly had some kind of grudge against the school.'

His problems began before he started taking classes at Oikos. Goh moved to the Bay area after living in Virginia.

While there, he started sinking into debt, collecting a number minor traffic tickets, and was evicted from an apartment complex after owing $1,300 in overdue rent.

In addition, the tax liens that he collected in 2006 and 2009 totalled $23,000.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, his brother Army Sargent Su Wan Ko died in a car accident in March 2011.

His mother Oak Chul Kim died a year ago, though she lived in Seoul, South Korea after moving from Oakland.

Goh's father, Young Nam Ko, used to live in Oakland near Goh but neighbours said that Ko recently moved. Goh's other brother Su Kwon Ko still lives in Virginia.

Emergency services first received a call at 10.33am (5.33pm GMT) yesterday, reporting a woman on the ground bleeding.

As more calls came in from the school, the first arriving officer found a victim suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, he said.

More officers arrived and formed a perimeter around the school in the belief that the suspect was still inside, he said.

SWAT teams surrounded the building, smashing glass with sledgehammers before rushing inside to find the gunman had fled.

Paul Singh, whose sister was one of three students wounded, said the gunman threatened he was going to kill everyone in the class.

'She told me that a guy went crazy and she got shot,' her brother Paul Singh told the Oakland Tribune.

'She was running, she was crying, she was bleeding. It was wrong.'

A memorial service will be held at 6pm tonight at the local Korean United Methodist Church.

Panicked students took refuge where the could. Tashi Wangchuk said his nursing student wife locked the door to an adjoining classroom and turned off the lights.

He said the man 'banged on the door several times and started shooting inside' to break the glass but didn't go in.

One student, 19-year-old Dawinder Kaur, told her brother she was in her nursing class when a former student who had been absent from the class for months told them all to line up against the wall.

About 35 students were in the single-storey college at the time. Five died at the scene and two others were pronounced dead after being rushed to hospital.

It was an 'unprecedented tragedy, shocking and senseless,' Mr Jordan said at a press conference. 'No words can express the gravity of this incident.'

Goh was not thought to have a criminal record. He gave himself up to a shop security guard after the killings after admitting to 'shooting some people.'

Police spokesman Cynthia Perkins said seven people were dead. She did not release any other details.

Chief Jordan said: 'This unprecedented tragedy was shocking and senseless.'

A security guard at the supermarket approached the man because he was acting suspiciously, KGO-TV reported. The man told the guard that he needed to talk to police because he shot people, and the guard called authorities.

Lisa Resler said she was buying fruit at Safeway with her four-year-old daughter when she saw the man dressed in khaki she later learned was the suspect walk toward the store exit.

'He was just in the store looking like somebody who was going to pick a deli sandwich up or something,' she said.

When she left the store, she saw him standing next to two police cars. She said she saw an officer kick his legs apart and pat him down for weapons but said they didn't appear to find anything.

'He didn't look like he had a sign of relief on him. He didn't look like he had much of any emotion on his face,' she said. 'From what I could see he was completely cooperative with police. He wasn't saying a word.'

Television news footage showed officers surrounding the building in search of the suspect, described as a Korean man in his 40s with a heavy build and wearing khaki clothing.

The footage also showed wounded people being carried out of the building.

Founder and head of school Pastor Jong Kim said that the shooter had been a nursing student at Oikos. He would not say if the man had been expelled or dropped out of the nursing programme.

He said he believed there were about 30 or so gunshots and said that he stayed in his office during the shooting.

Myung Soon Ma, the school's secretary, said she could not provide any details about what happened at the small private school, which serves the Korean community with courses from theology to Asian medicine.

'I feel really sad, so I cannot talk right now,' she said, speaking from her home.

Deborah Lee, who was in an English language class, said she heard five to six gunshots at first. 'The teacher said, "Run", and we run,' she said.

'I was OK, because I know God protects me. I'm not afraid of him.'

Another bystander saw a woman running away from the scene.

‘One of the people who was inside the building, she was saying there is a crazy guy inside,’ witness Brian Snow told KGO-TV.

‘She did say someone got shot in the chest right next to her before she got taken off in an ambulance.’

One man heard the shootings and saw one of the victims running from the scene.

'I just heard more gunshots. A lady came out running and she had blood on her arm, but I didn't know how bad the wound was,' said Brian Snow, who was at a credit union near the school the at the time of the shooting.

'She was just trying to make sure everyone was safe and took off her jacket and she had a big old hole in her arm,' he told KGO Radio.

California political figures expressed their condolences at the horrific events.

Governor Jerry Brown said: 'The tragic loss of life at Oikos University today is shocking and sad.

'Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and friends and the entire community affected by this senseless act of violence.'

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer added: 'I am praying for a full and speedy recovery for all those injured in today's shooting.'

And Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, called the killing a 'terrible tragedy', but praised police for their response to the incident.

The Oakland shooting came just over a month after a student in Ohio opened fire in his high school cafeteria, killing three students and wounding two others. Prosecutors said they do not know why the alleged gunman, 17-year-old TJ Lane, opened fire but they have ruled out bullying or a drugs motive.