A gunman who opened fire at Oikos University, a Christian schoolin Oakland, Calif., this morning, killing at least seven people and wounding three others, may be in custody, police said.According to police, the gunman entered the school at 10:30 a.m., and fired multiple shots. SWAT teams arrived shortly after the shooting and attempted to secure the area, locating victims and trying to get them to safety as they searched for the gunman.
Sources close to the investigation identified the suspect as One Goh, an American of Korean origin, according to ABC station KGO-TV in San Francisco . Police believe he was the sole shooter, but they are not ruling out the possibility of more suspects, KGO reported.
Goh was taken into custody around 11:30 a.m. at a mall in Alameda, about five miles from the school. A security guard at the South Shore Center approached Goh because he was acting suspiciously, KGO-TV reported. Goh told the security guard he needed to speak to police because he had shot several people, the guard said. The security guard then called Alameda police. Goh was taken into custody without incident and he was later transferred to Oakland police custody, KGO reported. A shopper at the mall who saw the man taken into custody said it occurred quietly.
“It looked like they stopped him at the door to, you know, see if he had anything in his pockets that he had stolen,” Lisa Resler said. “There was no fight. He was just wearing a beanie.”
Pastor Jong Kim, who founded the school about 10 years ago, told the Oakland Tribune that the shooter was a former nursing student, though he was unsure whether the man had been expelled or dropped out. One witness described a chaotic scene in the moments after the shooting. Brian Snow was at a nearby credit union, when he first heard the shots and saw a victim run out of the building.
“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,” Snow told KGO Radio. “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.”
Oikos University is a Christian university that focuses on nursing. The school’s website describes students as “given the opportunity to obtain a Christian education that is based on solid Christian doctrine and ideology. Our main goal is to foster spiritual Christian leaders who abide by God’s intentions and to expand God’s nation through them.”
All I can say is that I hope they install the same system that Virginia Tech did after the fatal shooting there in April 2007 so fatal shootings like this can be prevented in the future. We can never truly prevent things like this from happening at school campuses across the world, but we can better prepare for them.