Police say Oakland gunman’s actual target is ‘terrified’

Accused faces seven counts of murder

Oakland police are now saying that the intended target of the alleged college gunman who killed seven and injured three is not the school administrator they initially identified.

Police Chief Howard Jordan had said Wednesday that Ellen Cervellon, director of the nursing program at Oikos University, was the apparent target of a rampage reported to have been carried out by One Goh.

Cervellon, who was unhurt, had told the Associated Press that she thought Goh had targeted her because she had refused to issue him a tuition refund.

But late Wednesday, Jordan said investigators believed a different female administrator was the intended target in Monday’s shooting.

Jordan declined to say why police believe the other school official was targeted and would not identify her. “She is terrified,” he said. The development came just hours after police clarified that Goh, 43, had actually not been expelled this year from Oikos, where he studied nursing.

Instead, Alameda County district attorney Nancy O’malley said the South Korean national had been in school “until November of last year, at which time he made the decision to leave the school.”

“There is some information that the defendant wanted some money back for tuition he had paid,” O’malley said Wednesday.

“He did leave the school voluntarily. He was not expelled.”

O’malley and Jordan held a news conference Wednesday soon after Goh appeared in court for the first time. He was charged with seven counts of murder — all with special circumstances — and three counts of attempted murder. O’malley said her office was considering whether to seek the death penalty.

During the short but sombre hearing in Alameda County Superior Court, Judge Sandra K. Bean read the charges against Goh, who was largely hidden from view in a glass enclosure, save for the occasional flash of a red jail jumpsuit.

As Bean intoned the names of the dead and injured and the charges against Goh, the enormity of Monday’s carnage was hard to miss.

“This is a serious and violent felony,” she said with each count of murder and attempted murder — charges compounded by the use of a firearm, the taking of a hostage and the stealing of a car.

Goh, who was represented by a public defender, did not enter a plea. He will appear in court again April 30.

Court documents made public Wednesday revealed that Goh admitted to police that he took a .45-calibre handgun and four fully loaded magazines of ammunition to the campus, kidnapped one woman and shot several people before fleeing in a victim’s car.

“On Monday, April 2, One Goh committed crimes of such enormity and brutality that our community, our country and citizens around the world are left reeling,” O’malley told reporters shortly after Goh was arraigned.

This is a serious and violent felony JUDGE SANDRA K. BEAN