Students lined up, shot dead: authorities

SUSPECT ‘TEASED’

OAKLAND, CALIF. • A gunman at a religious school moved deliberately through the building, lining students up against a wall before gunning them down executionstyle, authorities said Tuesday.

The shooter — who left seven people dead — also hunted others down after they had taken cover under their desks.

Of the seven people who died, six were women. Three other people were wounded.

One L. Goh, 43, a Korean immigrant who was arrested after the attack, has admitted to the shooting at Oikos University, a small college in East Oakland, the authorities said.

The police said Tuesday that Mr. Goh might have been prompted to kill because people at the college had made fun of the way he spoke English. The authorities cautioned, however, that a clear motive had not yet been established.

“He was very upset,” said Officer Jonna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department. “He had been teased by his classmates because his English was not very good, and that angered him. He says that made him very mad.”

Police described Mr. Goh, who was not enrolled in the college this semester, as being “co-operative” with investigators and said he had provided a chilling account of how he armed himself with a semi-automatic pistol and systematically sought to shoot as many people as possible — including those who tried to flee.

Officer Watson said Mr. Goh had told investigators that Monday at about 10:30 a.m. “he went to the college specifically looking for a female administrator,” but that the administrator was not there.

After failing to find the woman, police said, Mr. Goh took a hostage and forced her into a classroom where he ordered students to line up against a wall. He shot them one by one.

Next, Mr. Goh fatally shot his female hostage and then moved “through the classroom into other areas of the building where he additionally shot other people who were trying to hide under desks or trying to hide in closets,” Officer Watson said.

Mr. Goh tried to shoot his way past a locked door that led into an adjacent classroom but was unsuccessful, police said. He then fled in a car stolen from a student before turning himself in to an employee at a grocery store in Alameda, several kilometres from the college.

“He is upset and disgruntled,” Officer Watson said Tuesday. “He used to be a student at the college. He was no longer a student. We don’t know all the details of his motive. That is still being worked out.”