A former student suspected of opening fire at a small Christian college in California, killing seven people and wounding three, was targeting a school administrator and former classmates who he felt had treated him unfairly, police said today.
According to witnesses, 43-year-old Korean-American One Goh told former classmates: "Get in line and I'm going to kill you all."
Oakland police chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference that Goh who had been expelled from Oikos University, had been cooperative with investigators after being taken into custody but "not particularly remorseful."
"We know that he came here with the intent of locating an administrator and she was not here," Mr Jordan said. "He then went through the entire building systematically and randomly shooting victims."
The mid-morning attack at Oikos, a small Oakland college that has links to the Korean-American Christian community, was the deadliest shooting rampage on a US college campus since 32 people were killed by a student at Virginia Tech University in April 2007.
Police today searched for the gun used in the rampage, using boats and a robot to plumb an estuary leading into nearby San Leandro Bay. Jordan said ballistics evidence showed the weapon was a semi-automatic pistol.
The three wounded victims had all been released from Highland Memorial Hospital in Oakland by mid-morning today.
Mr Jordan said those killed included six women and a man, ranging in age from 21 to 40. The victims came from Korea, Nigeria, Nepal and the Philippines. Six were students and one was a secretary, he said.
He said Goh, a Korean-American, had been expelled from the school two months earlier for "behavioral problems and anger management" issues, but he was not aware of any particular incident that had led to his removal.
Reuters