California college gunman found unfit to stand trial
By Curtis Skinner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A former California nursing student charged with seven counts of murder in a 2012 shooting rampage at a Christian college was found mentally unfit to stand trial on Thursday, officials said.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Gloria Rhynes ruled that South Korean-born One Goh was mentally incompetent to be tried over the April 2012 shooting at Oikos University in the Bay Area city of Oakland, said Teresa Drenick of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.
Goh has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges as well as three counts of attempted murder. Doctors have determined that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
"My decision doesn't mean this trial will never occur, it just means it won't happen yet," Rhynes told families of the victims in court on Thursday, according to local broadcaster KTVU. "Justice is not denied, it's just delayed."
A judge in January 2013 also ruled that Goh was unfit for trial, but a forensic psychologist at the psychiatric hospital where Goh is held issued a report in July saying he was competent, according to Goh's public defender, Dave Klaus.
Klaus said that while Goh has shown some improvement since being sent to Napa State Hospital, he still believes university administrators were conspiring against him and tracking his movements.
"We do not consider this a victory for any party, because what happened to the victims and families in this case was really tragic," Klaus said.
Klaus said Goh would be returned to a secure psychiatric facility and would stand trial if he is later deemed competent in court.
Authorities say Goh became angry after he dropped out of the nursing school in 2011 and administrators refused to refund his tuition.
According to court documents filed by prosecutors, Goh told investigators he went to the school in an industrial area of Oakland armed with a .45-caliber handgun and four fully-loaded magazines.
The document said Goh confessed to forcing an administrator from her office into a classroom at gunpoint. Inside the classroom, the court papers say, Goh killed several people before fleeing in a student's car.
A Presbyterian minister from South Korea founded Oikos University as a vocational school in 2004.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by James Dalgleish)
