The man who shot and killed six students and one employee at Oikos University in 2012 was sentenced to life in prison on Friday.
One Goh, now 48, was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms by Judge Jeffrey Horner. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in a plea deal in which Goh pleaded no contest back in May to seven counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, reports the East Bay Times.
Goh was a nursing student at the Oakland, California school before dropping out. He had reportedly been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia for several years and believed the school’s administrators planted tracking devices in his car and cameras in his home.
He was able to legally purchase a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun since he had no health records citing mental illness.
Following the shooting, he told police that he had been looking for one particular administrator who would not refund his tuition. If she refused, he planned to kill her and himself.
When he wasn’t able to find her, he took one hostage into a classroom and forced her and the students to line up against a wall. He shot and killed seven and injured three.
Goh fled the scene in one of the victim’s cars and was later apprehended at a grocery store five miles from the campus.
Goh also told authorities that he was teased by other students because of his poor English skills.
Criminal proceedings against Goh were suspended back in 2013 after a judge ruled that he was incompetent to stand trial.
He later underwent a competency hearing in 2015 in which another judge also ruled that he was mentally incompetent.
Goh’s eventual plea agreement came just two weeks after doctors had determined that he was competent to stand trial following treatment at Napa State Hospital.
His attorney, Assistant Public Defender David Klaus, read aloud a statement written by Goh. The statement said he hopes the fact that he will spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison will bring some degree of closure to the victims’ families.
“You deserve everything coming to you and I hope you rot in prison,” said Michael Howey, whose girlfriend Grace Kirika was wounded in the shooting. He told Goh that he was a coward and should have turned the gun on himself instead of killing others.
The Oikos shooting is currently the eighth-deadliest U.S. school massacre.
