Former student kills seven in U.S. college gun rampage
AT LEAST seven people were killed and three wounded yesterday after a man went on a shooting rampage at the Christian college where he once studied.
Police said the man started shooting indiscriminately in a morning acupuncture class at Oikos University, a private college in Oakland, California.
As police surrounded the college in a commercial area close to San Francisco, terrified students and staff poured from the building, some with bullet wounds.
Almost an hour and a half later, police arrested a man, described as a heavily-built Asian man in his 40s and wearing khaki clothing and a hat, in the car park of a shopping centre in the neighbouring town of Alameda.
Students were evacuated by armoured vehicles from the college building after witnesses said they heard some 30 shots.
Police surrounded the school, smashing glass with sledgehammers, before rushing inside only to find the gunman had fled.
Witnesses said four bodies were removed from the building and laid out on the grass covered in tarpaulins while ambulance crews removed at least five more victims on stretchers.
Pastor Jong Kim, who founded the college ten years ago, said the gunman had been a nursing student at Oikos but had dropped out of his course early. Angie Johnson, 52, said she was running errands in the area when she saw a young woman running out of the building with blood pouring from her arm and crying: ‘I’ve been shot.’
According to Miss Johnson, the woman said the gunman had been in her class when he suddenly got up, shot one person in the chest at point-blank range and then sprayed the room with bullets.
‘She said he looked crazy all the time, but they never knew how far he would go,’ she said.
Teacher Lucas Garcia said he was taking an English class when he heard shots from the other side of the building. ‘I looked out the door and someone said, “Somebody has a gun”, so I evacuated the classroom.’
Police refused to provide further details about the gunman or his possible motives but a spokesman said: ‘I can confirm that we do have one person who has been detained that we believe is responsible for this shooting.’
The college provides Korean students with Christian-based training in theology, music, nursing and Asian medicine.
In recent years, America has had to contend with a worsening nightmare of students opening fire on their classmates and teachers in bloody massacres inside schools and colleges.
The Oakland shooting came just a month after a student in Ohio opened fire in his 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.
In 1999, two students at Columbine High in Colorado killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves. In 2007, Seung-hui Cho, a student at the Virginia Tech university, went on the rampage across his campus, killing 32 and injuring 25 others. Two years earlier, Jeff Weise, 16, killed five students, a teacher and a security guard at his school in Minnesota.