Defendant in Oakland college massacre appears in court
Five years after allegedly shooting and killing seven people at Oakland’s Oikos University, One Goh, 48, appeared Wednesday in Alameda County Superior Court, saying little before being taken back to the locked psychiatric center where he’s been held since the grisly crime.
A judge ordered him to return to the courtroom at 9 a.m. Tuesday to enter a plea and set a trial date.
Goh pleaded not guilty to seven counts of murder in 2012, following Oakland’s deadliest mass shooting, but the Korean citizen who was studying nursing at the college was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.
Recently, court-appointed doctors said Goh’s mental capacity had been restored and his case could proceed, according to David Klaus, Goh’s attorney and deputy public defender.
“We don’t know at this point,” Klaus said as to whether Goh will again enter a not-guilty plea.
Investigators believe Goh plotted to kill an administrator at Oikos University when he was unable to get his tuition back after withdrawing from classes. The administrator, unbeknown to him, had left her job shortly after he dropped out.
Goh walked onto the school campus April 2, 2012, with a .45-caliber handgun, took the school receptionist hostage before fatally shooting her and six students, and wounding three others, authorities said. He then took a car belonging to one of his victims and drove to a nearby Alameda store before surrendering himself to store employees who contacted police, according to authorities.
Oikos University is a small, private Christian school near the Oakland airport that has a vocational-nursing program and offers courses in music, Bible studies and Asian medicine.
Goh was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent to Napa State Hospital, a locked psychiatric facility.
“When they are restored (to competency), they will commonly be kept at the hospital in order to maintain their competence until the case is resolved,” Klaus said.
In the courtroom, Goh occasionally looked at the court gallery through his dark-rimmed glasses.
He spoke only once, softly to the judge, to acknowledge the judge’s instruction before turning to his interpreter.