Police confirm ID of target in Oikos University shooting

GARANCE BURKE

TERRY COLLINS

Asso­ci­ated Press

OAKLAND, Calif. — Police con­firmed Wednes­day that the nurs­ing pro­gram direc­tor of the Cal­i­for­nia col­lege where a for­mer stu­dent is sus­pected of going on a shoot­ing ram­page was the suspect’s intended target.

Oak­land Police Chief Howard Jor­dan told The Asso­ci­ated Press that inves­ti­ga­tors believe Ellen Cervel­lon was the per­son sought by sus­pect One Goh.

Police said that when Goh was told Cervel­lon wasn’t there at the time, he began shoot­ing in classrooms.

Goh had been upset after drop­ping out of the nurs­ing pro­gram because school offi­cials would not fully refund his tuition, Cervel­lon said.

Mean­while, pros­e­cu­tors filed seven mur­der charges against Goh. He also was charged Wednes­day with three counts of attempted mur­der and faces a spe­cial cir­cum­stance alle­ga­tion of mul­ti­ple mur­ders that could make him eli­gi­ble for the death penalty.

Goh sur­ren­dered to author­i­ties Mon­day, an hour after the attack at Oikos Uni­ver­sity that left seven dead and three oth­ers wounded.

Police say in court doc­u­ments that Goh admit­ted to bring­ing a .45-caliber hand­gun to Oikos and four mag­a­zines of ammu­ni­tion. The doc­u­ments say he acknowl­edged shoot­ing sev­eral peo­ple before fleeing.

Goh is sched­uled to make his first appear­ance in Alameda County Supe­rior Court later Monday.

Cervel­lon told the AP that she believes she was the intended tar­get but was teach­ing else­where that morning.

Goh dropped out of the nurs­ing pro­gram at Oikos Uni­ver­sity around Novem­ber, but came back to cam­pus numer­ous times to ask her for a full tuition refund, she said.

Goh got angry when she told him the school could not refund all his money because he had been enrolled for nearly half of the pro­gram, she said.

“In talk­ing to sev­eral of the stu­dents and fac­ulty who were there, I think he was look­ing for me. I have that weight on my shoul­ders and I don’t know what to do with it,” she told The Asso­ci­ated Press, her voice qua­ver­ing with emo­tion. “Every sin­gle one of those stu­dents were going to be an excel­lent, excel­lent nurse. They’re in my heart and they always will be.”

Cervel­lon said she was not on cam­pus that morn­ing because she was doing her other job, teach­ing nurs­ing to stu­dents at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity, East Bay.

Posted by AP News on Apr 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.