Current Events

Sikh-American Teen Narrowly Escapes In California Shooting Spree

by HARRY HARRIS, JOSH RICHMAN, KRISTIN J. BENDER, ANGELA WOODALL, & MATTHEW ARTZ

 

 

 

Students at Oikos University in Oakland, California, U.S.A., recognized the man who entered their classroom Monday morning (April 2, 2012) as a former nursing student who hadn't been around for a few months.

Then he ordered everyone to get up against a wall, and he drew a handgun.

"The people started running, and he started shooting," said Gurpreet Singh Sahota, who relayed an account from his sister-in-law, nursing student Dawinder Kaur, 19.

Seven people died, and three more were wounded in the shooting at the small Christian university, the Bay Area's worst mass killing in almost 20 years.

Police said the victims are six women and one man ranging in age from their 20s to 40s.

Police Chief Howard Jordan on Monday evening confirmed the arrest of 43-year-old One Goh, of Oakland, a U.S. citizen. Not much was immediately known about One, but Jordan said he had no known previous criminal record. Officers believe he acted alone.

The scene was chaotic at Oikos University, which occupies a small building on Edgewater Drive just north of Hegenberger Road in a business park between Interstate 880 and Oakland International Airport. The scene there was slaughter.

Dawinder Kaur, 19, a U.S. Army Reservist from Santa Clara and a nursing student, told relatives the gunman had been a student in her class but had been absent for months before reappearing Monday morning. Some panicked when he drew a gun and began firing.

Dawinder was shot in the arm as she helped a friend who had fallen on the classroom's floor. She then ran outside and called her brother, Paul Singh.

"She told me that a guy went crazy, and she got shot," Paul said. "She was running. She was crying; she was bleeding. It was wrong."

Police received a 911 call at 10:33 a.m. Art Richards, of Oakland, said he arrived at the school right around that time to pick up a friend who's a nursing student there.

Shocking, Senseless

Richards said he saw a young woman wearing blue scrubs -- possibly Dawinder Kaur -- emerge from bushes near the building, with blood running down her right arm from a wound near her elbow. She told him the gunman had fired point-blank at a man's chest, and she had been grazed by a bullet before she fled the building. "She was in shock, fearing for her life, she didn't know what to say," he said. "She had a piece of her arm gone, and that was just a graze from a bullet."

Richards said the wounded woman also told him she had recognized the gunman as a former student who had "seemed kind of weird and that he wasn't all there, and people would pick on him."

Police arrived within a few minutes, swarming the building; soon other buildings nearby were locked down, and police and news helicopters hovered above. Richards said he saw officers tackle a man near the school, but they quickly determined he wasn't the suspect.

Officers advanced into the building, concerned the gunman might still be there and facing doors barricaded by terrified students. Some officers began smashing windows to get in; a police sergeant suffered a cut requiring hospitalization.

"About five or 10 minutes later, they dragged out a body and placed it between two police cars. He was limp. They ran and grabbed a blanket, and we knew he was dead," Richards said.

Police moved an armored vehicle in front of the school to provide cover as more than a dozen students and faculty - some of whom had been found cowering under desks -- were evacuated by SWAT officers. Some of the wounded immediately were whisked away by ambulance while others were treated at the scene.

Authorities said most of those killed and wounded had been  in a classroom near the school's entrance, while one was shot in an administrative office. The gunman reportedly fired through another classroom's locked door but didn't hit anyone there.

Student Dechen Yangzom later was credited with having locked that other classroom's door and turned off the lights as soon as she heard the first shots echoing from down the hall, very likely saving her own life and those of seven others inside.

Later, several bodies that had been removed from the school lay covered on the front lawn. Police said five people died at the scene; of five others who were taken to the hospital, two later died.

Dawinder Kaur's family, standing vigil as she was being treated at Alameda County Medical Center's Highland Hospital, said they saw other victims as well: a man shot in the shoulder and a woman shot in her hand and back.

Dawinder's father, Balvir Singh, via translation by Sahota, said her family is "lucky she is alive. We are thankful that God saved her." The gunman, he said, "should get the full consequences that he deserves for doing this to these people."

 

[Courtesy:  Mercury News, Oakland Tribune]

April 3, 2012

 

 

 

 

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