OAKLAND — The man whose 2012 shooting spree at an East Oakland nursing college left seven dead and three injured has died in a state prison, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Wednesday.
One Goh, 50, died March 20 in California State Prison, Sacramento. He was serving a sentence of seven life terms, one for each of his victims, after pleading no contest in May 2017 to seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder in exchange for avoiding the death penalty for the deadly April 2, 2012, massacre at Oikos University.
No cause was immediately given, said Lt. Levance Quinn of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office will determine a cause of death.
Goh was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and his delusions led him to believe that the administration and staff at Oikos were conspiring against him, alienating him from his fellow classmates and covertly having him bugged and followed. He was considered a good student before he dropped out of the school’s nursing program.
He had been considered mentally incompetent for most of the five years leading up to his sentencing in July 2017. He had been declared competent for trial just two weeks before he took a plea deal in May 2017.
“I’m very sad that Mr. Goh has passed on. It brings back a lot of memories how tragically sad the case was and all the lives lost,” David Klaus, Goh’s defense attorney, said in an interview with this news organization Wednesday.
Goh had turned himself and fully confessed to the mass shooting, he said. As the case was moving through the court system, Goh also made it clear that he had wanted to die and wanted the death penalty, Klaus said.
“He expressed remorse throughout the case,” Klaus said. “These people who died were his friends, his classmates. I don’t think he truly intended for them to die. It was a product of this severe illness.”
Goh told police he went to the Oikos campus in East Oakland that day to confront a specific administrator and, if she didn’t refund him the $6,000 he believed he was due, he was going to kill her and himself. When Goh discovered the administrator wasn’t on campus, he kidnapped receptionist Katleen Ping, 24, at gunpoint and brought her to the classroom occupied by his former teacher and classmates.
Ping’s brother, Kaine, addressed the court during the July 2017 sentencing, breaking down as he told the court how his sister had dreams of becoming a nurse. Kaine Ping called Goh “a piece of (expletive)” in open court, and again whispered it on his way back to his seat inside the courtroom, fists clenched. Their mother remained mostly silent, tears streaming down her face during the emotional hearing.
Goh had no reaction and remained silent at the time of his sentencing, mostly looking down.
Ping was killed in the shooting, along with students Doris Chibuko, 42; Lydia Sim, 21; Grace Kim, 23; Judith Seymour, 53; Sonam Choedon, 33; and Tshering Bhutia, 38. Three others survived gunshot wounds.
Seymour’s daughter, Cammella, had said she wanted the death penalty for Goh. She was in graduate school at the time of her mother’s death, and said in court before Judge Jeffrey Horner that she’s been forever traumatized in a classroom.
“Your honor, I can’t sit in a classroom without thinking something bad is going to happen to me,” she said.
Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.