Oakland mass killing suspect declared mentally unfit to stand trial

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An Alameda County Superior Court judge declared Monday that a former nursing student charged with killing seven people at Oakland’s Oikos University last year is not mentally competent to stand trial.

One L. Goh, a 43-year-old South Korean national, has also been charged with three counts of attempted murder in the April rampage at the small Christian vocational school.

Goh’s public defender had questioned his ability to understand the proceedings or assist in his own defense – the legal threshold of competence. Two psychiatrists who evaluated Goh determined that he is currently unfit to stand trial, and prosecutors did not take issue with those findings, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Teresa Drenick, a department spokeswoman.

Goh will return to court Jan. 28 to determine where he will be placed for treatment in an attempt to restore him to competency, Drenick said.

According to court records, Goh admitted to police that he took a .45-caliber handgun and four fully loaded magazines to the small campus near Oakland International Airport, kidnapped one woman and shot several people before fleeing in a victim’s car. According to court documents, Goh drove to a nearby Safeway less than an hour after the rampage and ‘admitted to shooting several people in Oakland.’

Goh was also ‘positively identified by at least three witnesses and surviving victims as the person who entered the school ... and started shooting,’ the records said.

Goh refused to eat for nearly a month after his arrest.

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