Upset with university staff, Korean student went on shooting rampage
An expelled South Korean student L Goh from a Californian university shot dead seven people after being teased over his poor English skills. He is reported to have opened fire at random when he found his intended target, a woman administrator, was not in the building.
Goh "then went through the entire building systematically and randomly shooting victims," Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference here Tuesday.
He forced a secretary into a classroom and asked people to line up, Jordan said.
"Not everyone was cooperative, and that's when he began shooting," he said. The dead included six students and the secretary, the police chief said.
The attack seemed premeditated.
A student of nursing, Goh was upset with administrators at the school, and also with several students who made "made fun of his lack of English speaking skills. It made him feel isolated compared to the other students," Jordan said.
The 43-year-old South Korean national had been expelled, possibly for behavioral problems, according to Jordan.
Goh had left behind a string of debts and minor traffic citations in his former home state of Virginia. His brother was killed in a car accident last year in Virginia while on active duty in the U.S. Army, according to Stars and Stripes newspaper.
Howard described Goh as cooperating with authorities although not particularly remorseful.
At Highland Hospital, Dawinder Kaur's family told the Oakland Tribune that she was being treated for a gunshot to her elbow.
The 19-year-old U.S. Army Reservist told her family that that the gunman was a student in her nursing class who had been absent for months before returning Monday.
The gunman entered the classroom and ordered students to line up against the wall.
When he showed his gun, students began running and he opened fire, her family said.
Goh fled from the school in a Honda Accord that belonged to one of the victims, Jordan said.
The suspect was detained at a Safeway supermarket about three miles from the university, about an hour after the shooting.
Police on Tuesday were still looking for the gun used, which Jordan described as a semiautomatic handgun.
Police first received a 911 call at 10:33 a.m. Monday reporting that a woman on the ground was bleeding. As more calls came in from the school, the first police officer to arrive on the scene found a victim suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, Jordan said.
More officers then arrived and formed a perimeter around the tiny college of fewer than 100 students in a large industrial park near the Oakland airport, in the belief that the suspect was still inside, he said.
"Potential victims remained inside the building either trapped by a locked door which officers were unable to open," Jordan said. Others were unable to flee because they were injured, he said.
There were about 35 people in or near the building when gunfire broke out. Of the seven fatalities, five died at the scene and another two at the hospital. The wounded victims are in stable condition, and at least one person was released from the hospital.
The victims, in the age group 21 to 40, were from various countries, including Nigeria, Nepal and the Philippines.
Source:Caribbean News.Net
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