Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 2:21 pm Post subject: Another school shooting
'Are you all dead yet?' Police gun down ex-student, 17, in German school massacre 11th March 2009
A deranged teenager who grew up in a home that was full of guns targeted women in a bloody rampage that left 16 people dead, it emerged tonight. Clad in black combat gear, Tim Kretschmer, 17, took one of his father's 16 weapons and went to his former school in Germany where he gunned down 10 children and three teachers. Eight of the children were girls, and two of the teachers were women. The only words he was heard to utter during the schoolroom slaughter were: 'Are you all dead yet?'
The women teachers died trying to shield the children from his bullets as he kept his finger on the trigger of his automatic weapon, shooting all his victims in the head. After leaving the school he killed three others, before shooting himself during a gun battle with police.
There was no immediate explanation of a motive, but some speculated the proportion of female victims suggested he had something against women. 'There are no indications at the moment of any warning or suggestion that the attack could have been foreseen,' Heribert Rech, interior minister of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, told a news conference. But it is conspicuous that most of his victims were females,' he added.
At the school he went first to Class 10 D, his old class before he flunked out of school with no qualifications. 'They still had their pens in their hands when he started firing,' said Heribert Rech, a local politician who visited the massacre site.
Privileged, the son of wealthy parents, a boy who was envied by some classmates because he always had pocket money, Kretschmer had written on a website in the past: 'What do I like about myself? Nothing. What do I hate about myself? Nothing. Job: sadly, still at school.' Kretschmer returned to the Albertville Secondary School in Winnenden, a town of 27,000 near Stuttgart, at about 9.30 a.m. and began firing with a 9-millimetre Beretta automatic pistol at the students.
Police said Kretschmer – a former table-tennis champ at the school - donned a black SEK police uniform of the kind worn by the elite police officers who were on his trail minutes after the massacre. He also put on a gas mask to give him a more sinister aspect as he set out on his orgy of killing. One woman teacher stood in front of some of the children with a 'defiant look on her face.' 'He gunned her down with ice-cold efficiency,' said a police spokesman. Another teacher slammed the door of her classroom in his face. But he kicked it open and shot her in the face as she spread her arms in a bid to protect the children.
Police reported that many of the injured suffered ricochet gunshot wounds as the bullets from Kretschmer’s gun bounced wildly off the walls of the school. He fired most bullets into classroom 10 D. He went in and out of the room three times, speaking the only words he uttered throughout the massacre: 'Are you all dead yet?'
Youngsters who could hurled themselves through the first floor windows of the building to escape his hail of bullets and ran for cover, screaming; 'He's killing everyone, he's killing everyone!' When he left he shot dead a gardener in a psychiatric hospital opposite the school. Then he hi-jacked a car to escape through the dragnet of armed police sealing off all roads around Winnenden. He told the shocked driver to 'get me out of town.'
On the autobahn to Stuttgart 12 miles away he released his hostage and drove off for his final encounter with police at a shopping centre. After shooting dead two innocent shoppers he raked a police car with gunfire, seriously wounding two officers. Police sharpshooters fired back, wounding him in the leg, but last night police said the youth had died after he turned his gun on himself.
Police stormed his home shortly after the killing spree and took his mother into custody for questioning. His father Joerg is a wealthy businessman who owns a paper factory, and belongs to a gun club. He legally owned 16 guns -- 15 of which were safely locked away. His son had taken the 16th. His mother Ute works as an office clerk and he has a younger sister Jasmin, aged 14.
'He tried to buy friends with his money but he couldn’t get any,' said Mario Hofffman, a school contemporary. 'He was known as a loser who was miserable at his lot,' said another. But mostly they said he was average – average looks, average intelligence, average tastes.
School shootings have been on the rise in Germany in recent years. In February 2002, a 22-year-old gunman killed the headmaster and seriously injured another person in a vocational training centre he attended at Freising, near Munich. The worst occurred in April 2002 when expelled student Robert Steinhauser gunned down 16 people before turning his gun on himself. Yesterday’s spree equals that. In November 2006, a former student at a vocational school in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany went a shooting spree in the establishment, injuring 37 people before turning his gun on himself.
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Mental stuff. The person who was hijacked and let go will have some story to tell... maybe that's why he didn't kill them?
Alabama gunman kills 10 in shooting spree A gunman in the southern American state of Alabama killed at least 10 people in a shooting rampage through two small towns before turning the gun on himself.
Tom Leonard and Paul Henderson
11 Mar 2009
telegraph.co.uk
The killer took out ten victims with a semi-automatic weapon before killing himself when he was cornered by armed police. The man, in his mid-30s, murdered his own mother and grandparents, as well as the wife of a local deputy sheriff and her three-month-old baby at a mobile home in Samson, a rural town of just 3,000 people 15 miles north of Florida. The gunman calmly continued the killing spree at two nearby houses where an adult was shot dead on porches at each home. He continued firing at passersby as he started a 15-mile journey towards the town of Geneva, shooting a state trooper who was pursuing him in a car. The trooper survived gunshot wounds. Wildly firing off his M16-type weapon the gunman took another life in the grounds of a business and his ninth victim was shot dead in a petrol station.
Samson contractor Greg McCullough said he was pumping petrol when the gunman roared into the parking lot and slammed on his brakes. Then he saw the rifle and the gunman opened fire, killing a woman coming out of the service station and wounding McCullough in the shoulder and arm with bullet fragments that struck his truck and the pump. "I first thought it was somebody playing," he said.
At one point a baby was snatched to safety and other people were shot and injured. Soleta Darden, who witnessed one of the shoot-outs in front of a Wal-Mart.," said: "I heard five shots to my right, and then I looked up and saw a maroon Eclipse speed off from the scene, then I saw deputies and troopers in pursuit after him. I was just scared, crazy scared. I thought 'what the crap is going on'."
Alabama officials said the killer's tenth victim – a woman – was found dead in his mother's house which was set on fire in nearby Kinston in Coffee County before the shooting sprees began. Officials located a woman's body inside the house, but they were not able to get inside the still-burning building to investigate.
"He started in his mother's house," said Coroner Robert Preachers. "Then he went to Samson and cleaned his family out. We don't know what triggered it." Eventually the gunman pulled into the Reliable Metal Products plant in Geneva – where he once worked – and fired a 30-round burst in a shoot-out with police. Police Chief Franki Lindsey was shot twice – surviving thanks to a bulletproof vest. "Then the subject entered the business," said police spokesman Steve Jarrett. "Within minutes, shots were heard. Law enforcement officers found him dead. "There are believed to be additional people shot and wounded during these episodes." "Had he not been slowed down, no doubt we would have had more casualties," said Geneva mayor Wynnton Melton. "He was shooting anybody he saw."
Another mass killing occurred in south Alabama in 2002, when Westley Devon Harris gunned down six members of his 16-year-old girlfriend's family at their farm in Luverne. Harris was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty in 2005.
Germany school killer gave warning in chatroom 'You will hear about me tomorrow' Lizzy Davies in Winnenden and Helen Pidd
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 12 March 2009
The 17-year-old boy who killed 15 people in a gun rampage in south-west Germany yesterday had warned on an internet chatroom the night before that he would go to his old school and do something big the following day, German authorities said today. Tim Kretschmer shot nine pupils and three teachers at the Albertville secondary school in Winnenden on Wednesday morning. He killed another three people before he was shot dead by police.
At a press conference this afternoon, police said Kretschmer had begun having psychiatric sessions last year but stopped attending in September. One of Kretschmer's killings was at the mental health clinic he had attended.
Heribert Rech, interior minister of the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, said Kretschmer went on to an internet chatroom in the early hours of Wednesday where he wrote: "I've had enough. I'm fed up of this pointless life. Always the same. Everybody laughs at me. No one sees my potential. I'm serious. I have weapons and I will go to my old school in the morning and have a proper barbecue. Maybe I'll get away. Listen out. You will hear about me tomorrow. Remember the place's name: Winnenden."
A 17-year-old boy from Bavaria was in the chatroom at the time and last night told his father, who reported it to the police. According to a police spokesman, Klaus Hinderer, analysis of Kretschmer's computer has shown that the teenager had become an avid player of shoot-em-up video games, particularly one called Counter-Strike, in recent months.
It emerged in German reports today that the headteacher was able to warn teachers with a pre-arranged code over the public address system when Kretschmer burst in, possibly preventing him from killing any more than 12. Students said the principal quickly broadcast a coded message to teachers: "Frau Koma is coming." "Then our teacher closed the door and said we should close the windows and sit on the floor," a student, identified only as Kim S, told ZDF television.
In German the word "amoklauf" is used to describe mass shootings, and "koma" is the reverse of the word "amok." Germany's Bild newspaper reported the coded alert was worked out by German educators after a deadly school shooting in Erfurt in 2002 as a way to warn teachers.
An amateur video has emerged showing Kretschmer's final moments. The boy, wearing dark clothing, can be seen walking unsteadily between parked cars in front of a car dealership. Minutes before, Kretschmer had shot a sales assistant and a customer inside. He left the showroom and was confronted by waiting police marksmen. Kretschmer can be seen on the video apparently reloading his gun before he slumps to the floor, hit in the leg by a police bullet.
It emerged today that Kretschmer sent a letter to his parents saying he was desperately unhappy and "couldn't go on". Kretschmer wrote the note three weeks ago and gave it to his mother and father, said Fabienne Böhm, who met Kretschmer recently through a friend. "He wrote to his parents that he's suffering and he can't go on," she told the Associated Press.
As investigators began their first full day of inquiries into the massacre, German media began to release the names of Kretschmer's victims, but local police refused to confirm the details.
Flags are flying at half-mast across Germany in mourning for the 15 people killed by the 9mm Beretta pistol police believe he took from his parents' bedroom. A shrine of flowers and candles has formed in front of the three-storey school building where Kretschmer killed eight girls, one boy and three female teachers. Many cards left there paid tribute to those lost. One, pinned down by a cherub statuette and two single flowers, read simply: "Why?"
That question, among others, will be foremost in the minds of police as they attempt to establish what could have motivated an apparently normal young man to perpetrate an act of such horror.
Despite 11 of the victims being female, officials remained reticent about the possibility that Kretschmer had deliberately targeted girls, suggesting instead the gender imbalance could have been due to positioning in the classroom. "I don't want to speculate too much about this at this point," said Heribert Rech, the interior minister of Baden-Württemberg. "The pupils sitting nearest the door were girls."
Testimonies of friends and acquaintances today portray the table tennis champion as a lonely and frustrated person who felt rejected by society. A 17-year-old who gave his name as Aki said he had been studying alongside Kretschmer at a private business school in the region and described him as a quiet and reserved boy who enjoyed playing Counter-Strike, a multi-player game that involves carrying out assassinations to complete missions. "He was good," he said.
Other friends said he had kept dozens of air guns in his bedroom and had taken after his father in his love of guns and weaponry. According to Böhm, 12, Kretschmer had complained of being teased by his fellow students and ignored by his teachers while at Albertville.
Today a team of school and police psychologists was due to arrive in Baden-Württemberg to assist the bereaved and survivors of the attack. One trauma specialist, Christian Luedke, told the Neue Presse newspaper the current site of Albertsville school should be closed for good. "The school has become a crime scene," he said. "No more lessons can take place there."
While looking for stuff regarding this story I found this video about a previous shool-shooter in Germany.
At 9:30 a.m. on Monday, November 20 2006,18-year-old Sebastian B stormed into his former junior high school heavily armed. He opened fire on students and threw smoke bombs, wounding more than 30 (No Deaths) before taking his own life.
Minister admits German massacre warning was a fake Fran Yeoman in Winnenden and Philippe Naughton
timesonline.co.uk
A second German school not far from the scene of this week’s massacre was evacuated this morning after threats discovered on the internet. The alert came as a senior minister in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg admitted that an online warning that he claimed had come from the teenage gunman in Winnenden was a forgery - as the administrators of the website had insisted.
In what was presented as a breakthrough for investigators, Heribert Rech, the state's Interior Minister, announced yesterday that 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer had left a message on a forum at the site Krautchan.net at 2.45am on Wednesday - almost seven hours before embarking on a shootnig spree in which he killed 15 people.
In it, Kretschmer complained of his "sh**ty life" and said that he was going to shoot up his old school because "everyone is laughing at me". The Times reported yesterday afternoon that the message had never existed, but was just a fake image file first posted on the Krautchan.net website three hours after Kretschmer committed suicide. A Krautchan moderator, Tsaryu, said: "I even know who posted it, and he's from Düsseldorf. That's not even near Baden-Württemberg."
Last night, Mr Rech admitted that it was indeed a fake. “Some crazy person obviously put out this dreadful false message,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “It must have been made up afterwards."
There was another internet alert this morning in the town of Ilsfeld, only 20 miles (30km) north of Winnenden, where police were alerted to a threat at 3am.“We are taking the threat seriously,” Roberto Monaci, a police spokesman said. The school, attended by 650 pupils, was cordoned off first thing and students sent to a nearby sports hall. Clearly embarrassed by the internet fake, police said that they were working with US authorities to track down its source. The Krautchan site is hosted on servers in the United States.
Administrators of the site yesterday said that Kretschmer had not posted any message on the site, insisting that the message was a fake. The site is primarily an "imageboard" site used for posting and discussing images, often photoshopped fakes of a topical nature created for a joke. According to a screen-capture of the discussion thread in question, the post containing the image of Kretschmer's message was posted on the site at 4.57pm with the message: "Look at the timestamp on this." The "fake" message was timestamped at 2.45am and carried the ID code 485465, both the same as a post 14 hours earlier which started off the online conversation. Kretschmer killed himself at 12.30pm.
Since no two posts can share the same ID, other users immediately cried foul. "Photoshop," the next user wrote. "Gimp," wrote another, referring to alternative image-manipulation software. It is not clear whether the police had seen the entire thread before yesterday's press conference or were simply sent a copy of the image by the father of a 17-year-old boy from Bavaria who regularly used the site. Tsaryu said police had not contacted site administrators before presenting the message as genuine.
"As one of the moderators of Krautchan I can assure you that the screenshot in question is indeed forgery," he said in an e-mail to The Times. "The faked screencapture (No.486231) was uploaded AFTER the killing spree." The moderator also pointed out that German media reports had spoken of a conversation between Kretschmer and a friend called Bernd. In fact, under Krautnet protocol, all communications are anonymous - and all users adopt the name Bernd. "The user in question, who reported it to the police was indeed from Bavaria, but neither was it his friend, nor was he named Bernd. It was one of the many anonymous users on Krautchan."
It emerged yesterday that Kretschmer, whose victims included nine pupils at the Albertville technical school, eight of them girls, also shot dead a man at a psychiatric clinic where he had been treated for depression,. Kretschmer was supposed to attend appointments at the clinic in Winnenden but broke off the treatment. Minutes after fleeing the school on Wednesdaymorning, he killed a man, thought to be a gardener, outside the clinic. He then commandeered a car, held a gun to the head of his 41-year old hostage and asked him: “Should I have fun and pick off some more drivers?” He went on to kill two more people at a car showroom in the nearby town of Wendlingen before committing suicide.
With the internet message shown to be a hoax, investigators are still struggling to understand the motives of a teenager whose obsession with fictional violence might have contributed to the all too real blood-bath that has shattered the normally quiet town in which he grew up. Detectives who seized Kretschmer’s home computer discovered violent video games and pornography. Friends said that he regularly played the computer game Counter Strike and had become increasingly fascinated with horror films. His parents insisted, however, that Kretschmer also liked comedies and action films.
No homicide charge for father of Winnenden killer
6 May 10
thelocal.de
The father of Tim Kretschmer, the teenager who shot dead 15 people at his former school in Winnenden last year, will not face charges of negligent homicide as previously expected, a court announced Thursday.
A spokeswoman for the court in Stuttgart said Kretschmer’s father, a 51-year-old businessman, would instead face prosecution for enabling his son to get access to his weapons cache, along with ammunition. But there were not sufficient grounds to charge him with negligent homicide, as prosecutors in the state of Baden-Württemberg had previously planned.
Last March, Tim Kretschmer, 17, used his father’s 9mm Beretta pistol in a school shooting rampage that left nine pupils and three teachers dead, mostly with execution-style shots to the head. A further three people lost their lives in a dramatic chase and shoot-out with police before, cornered, Kretschmer turned the gun on himself.
State prosecutors charged Kretschmer’s father in November with 15 cases of negligent homicide and a further 13 cases of negligently causing injury, on the grounds that he had left the gun and ammunition unsecured in his bedroom. He legally kept more than a dozen weapon in the family home. But the Stuttgart court has now ruled that negligent homicide and injury charges could be considered only if the father's conduct had directly caused the massacre.
The court decided it could not rule out the possibility that Kretschmer would also have committed the crime if the gun, magazine and ammunition had been properly secured in the weapons cabinet. There was substantial evidence that Kretschmer knew the security combination to the cabinet, it said. A date for the trial on lesser charges had not yet been set.
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If the gun was secured the people wouldn't be dead, therfore he has to accept part of the blame. Why he needs a bloody gun in the first place is another question - he must have a tiny cock.
Brazil school shooting: at least 12 children killed in Rio as former pupil goes on rampage At least 12 children were killed in a massacre at a school in Rio de Janeiro after an ex-pupil talked his way into the building and shot dead pupils and teachers before turning the gun on himself.
Jon Swaine
07 Apr 2011
Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, 24, entered Tasso da Silveira school at about 8am, saying that he was there to give a speech. He was carrying two revolvers, ammunition and a suicide note. After killing a dozen pupils aged between 12 and 14, de Oliveira exchanged fire with an officer who rushed to the scene from a police station next door, before reportedly shooting himself dead.
Emergency service officials said they believed the gunman had wounded about 30 people in the attack. Dilma rousseff, the Brazilian president, said she was "shocked and disturbed" at the shooting. "It was a terrible scene, with children hit by bullets," Col Evandro Bezerra, a fire department spokesman, told local television. A man who had arrived to collect his children described the school as "a war scene". "I've never seen anything like it," the man said. "This type of thing happens in the United States, not here."
The attack was not thought to be linked to the city's notorious gang violence. It is thought that after arriving at the school, which teaches pupils between the ages of nine and 14, de Oliveira shot two boys, one in the head and the other in the arm. He was then said to have walked through the school gates, entered the building and walked into a full classroom, where eighth-grade students were studying Portuguese.
Dorival Porto Rafael, a rubbish collector who was at the school, told a local news website: "Without saying anything he took out a pistol from his bag and started firing. The police arrived and he tried to go up to the next floor, but when he saw he was surrounded, he shot himself in the head." Children were seen fleeing from the school towards the police station soon after. "Some of them were covered in blood, shaken, asking for help," a local resident told the BBC. "They were desperate and crying."
Frantic parents of the school's 1,000 pupils then began arriving at the gates. The massacre came as city authorities attempted to tighten security and clean up Rio's image in advance of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.
Brazil school shooting: gunman captured on security video
Security camera video showing the moment a gunman walked into a school in Rio de Janeiro and opened fire on children in two classrooms has been released by police.
Twenty-four-year-old Wellington de Oliveira killed 12 children and then shot himself at a public school in a poor suburb of Rio, shocking the South American nation that has never seen such an incident before. The hallway video shows Oliveira carrying a gun and several children running desperately out of two classrooms as he shot indiscriminately at them. Some are clearly injured. One grips his shoulder and limps down the hall.
Police said Oliveira, a former pupil, entered the school carrying two guns and a suicide note. He told security he was there to deliver a speech and then opened fire on students.
'He is a brother and an icon' Sinister letters and photos left by Rio gunman reveal he modelled himself on Virginia shooter
18 April 2011
The Brazilian gunman who shot dead 12 pupils in the Rio de Janeiro school massacre was inspired by the Virginia Tech shooter, whom he saw as 'a brother' and an 'icon', rambling letters reveal. In one particularly sinister photo, Wellington de Oliveira poses with his handgun-wielding arms outstretched, just as Cho Seung-Hui did before he murdered 32 people in a 2007 killing spree.
It was among a series of disturbing messages from beyond the grave, in which videos, photos and written documents pay tribute to Cho, hailing his bravery, calling him 'an icon in the struggle against the unfaithful'. Oliveira, 23, killed himself after the shocking and inexplicable bloodshed at Tasso de Silveira elementary school last weekend, the magnitude of which shocked the nation. The letters, strikingly similar to those left by Cho, reveal an angry, delusional character, motivated by the bullying and humiliation he suffered as a student and continued to suffer into adulthood.
In the videos and letters, Oliveira mentions God, quotes the Bible extensively, and discusses the quotations in long, rambling passages. He cites Cho as 'a brother' along with a Brazilian teenager who in 2003 shot and wounded six students in the school where he'd studied, then killed himself. Oliveira thanks the two for their 'bravery', and for leading the way, using language similar to that used by Cho in videos he'd made before dying, which are widely available on the Internet.
Like Cho, Oliveira refers repeatedly to others who were bullied as brothers. Like Cho, he says he was once weak and now is strong and will seek revenge for himself and others who, like him, were persecuted. They both blamed school officials and bullies for the attacks. 'I hope this serves as a lesson, especially to those school officials who stood by with their arms crossed as students were being attacked, humiliated, ridiculed,' Oliveira says in one video. 'I want to be very clear that I am not responsible for the deaths that will occur, even though my fingers will be on the trigger... Each time you see someone making fun of someone else for their physical appearance, the clothing or any reason... remember that type of person is responsible for all these deaths, including my own.'
The gunman roamed the halls of the school for children aged 10 to 15, lining his victims against a wall and shooting them in the head at point blank range as he shouted 'I'm going to kill you all!' He had told school officials who approached him that he was there to deliver a speech, and then opened fire on students with two pistols. Two boys, one with a gunshot wound, fled the school and ran to two police officers on patrol two blocks away.
Jade Ramos, a student at the school, said the gunman repeatedly yelled 'I'm going to kill you all!' 'He had already killed a lot of children in the first floor and in the yard,' she said. 'He kept telling the kids to face the wall and was shooting at their heads. The children kept begging, 'No, please!' There was a lot of blood, children agonising on the stairs.' Ramos said she escaped by running into a classroom, where a teacher then locked the door and barricaded it with tables.
Oliveira left a rambling and mostly incoherent letter at the scene indicating he wanted to kill himself.
KILLER'S DERANGED FINAL WORDS
The following are excerpts from the letter Wellington de Oliveira left at the school:
'You should first know that the impure cannot touch me without gloves, only the chaste or those who lost their chastity after marriage and were not involved in adultery can touch me without gloves, or, in other words, no fornicator or adulterer can have direct contact with me. Those who prepare my burial should take off all my clothes, wash me, dry me and wrap me totally naked in a white sheet that is in this building, in a bag that I left in the first room on the first floor, after they have wrapped me in this sheet they can put me in my coffin.
'If possible, I want to be buried next to the grave where my mom sleeps. I need to be visited at my grave by a faithful follower of God at least once, he must pray in front of my grave and ask God's forgiveness for what I did praying that upon his return Jesus wakes me from the sleep of death for eternal life. I left a house in Sepetiba which no family needs, there are poor institutions, financed by generous people, that take care of abandoned animals, I want this space where I passed my final months donated to one of these institutions.'
California shooting: nursing director says she fears she was target The nursing programme director at a Christian college where alleged gunman One Goh killed seven people has said she thinks she may have been the suspect’s intended target.
Nick Allen
4th Apr 2012
telegraph.co.uk
Ellen Cervellon spoke as 43-year-old Korean-American nursing student One Goh was charged with murder and attempted murder Miss Cervellon said Goh dropped out of the nursing programme at Oikos University last year, but came back to ask her for a full refund on his tuition. He became angry when she said the school could not refund all of his money.
“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 said. “Every single one of those students were going to be an excellent, excellent nurse. They’re in my heart and they always will be.”
New details about Goh, 43, were disclosed as detectives released the first photograph of him, staring blankly into a camera for his mugshot hours after Monday’s mass shooting in Oakland, California. Romie John Delariman, a college teacher who knew Goh, said he was a keen student but felt paranoid about being an older man in classes where most pupils were young women. Six of those who died in the massacre were women and the only man to die was shot by Goh in a carjacking as he fled the scene.
Mr Delariman said: “He said he was too old to go to school with all the young people and he said all his classmates were mean to him. He just can’t deal with women. I always advised him 'You go to school to learn, not to make friends.’ He can’t get along with people. If you say 'How are you?’ he’ll say ’Why? Don’t I look OK? Did I do something to you?’” The teacher said Goh had also boasted about beating up a mugger in San Francisco and talked about carrying a gun for protection. He said: “I don’t know if you could call it mentally unstable but sometimes he would brag that he was capable of hurting people.”
Goh had been expelled from Oikos University, a small 100-student religious education establishment, in January for “anger management” issues. He bought a semi-automatic pistol legally the following month. For most of the previous decade he had lived in Virginia, the state where a gunman killed 32 innocent people at the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. While in that state Goh incurred debts including $23,000 (£14,500) in unpaid taxes and $15,000 (£9,500) to banks.
After arriving in California to make a new start he described leaving behind a divorce, a daughter, and a failed building business in Virginia. He found a job at an Asian food warehouse but was let go after four months for arguing with customers. His former employer said: “Something inside went wrong. He was very angry all these years.” The death of his war veteran brother in a road accident last year was said to have affected him deeply.
On Tuesday night 1,000 people, including relatives and friends of the victims, gathered for a memorial service in English and Korean at a Baptist church in Oakland. Mayor Jean Quan, the first Asian-American woman mayor of a major US city, told mourners: “This is America, where you can find a gun easier than mental health services. America has to look into its soul. It cannot be that we can find more guns in our streets than we can find health care and mental health services. That cannot be. That’s not our America.”
Goh later appeared in court, shackled and wearing a red jumpsuit, and was charged with seven counts of murder and three of attempted murder. He did not enter a plea during the brief hearing.
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