Oakland shooting rampage suspect pleads not guilty

OAKLAND — The former nursing student charged with seven counts of murder after a shooting rampage at a vocational school in Oakland pleaded not guilty Monday afternoon.

One L. Goh, a 43-year-old South Korean national, had also been charged with three counts of attempted murder in the rampage at Oikos University nearly a month ago.

Shackled to a chair in the jury box of Department 11 and clad in a red jail uniform, Goh appeared thinner than the day he was arrested in the killings of six students and a school employee. Authorities have said they were shot with a gun he had purchased legally a few months earlier.

Speaking with reporters outside of court Monday, Sgt. J.D. Nelson, spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, said Goh had begun eating over the weekend for the first time since the April 2 shootings.

“He’s been moved out of the infirmary” at Santa Rita Jail in the East Bay suburb of Dublin, Nelson said. “He didn’t eat for nearly a month at the jail. We don’t know why.... He’s in administrative segregation and is out of his cell only one hour a day.”

Wangchen Nyima, brother of one of the shooting victims, said he did not understand Goh’s not-guilty plea. He had come to Department 11 on Monday because “I wanted to see. I wanted to know what was really happening.... I had to be here for my sister.”

Nyima’s sister, Tibetan nursing student Sonam Choedon, 33, died in the bloody rampage.

“I don’t know why he’s not guilty,” Nyima said. “I lost my sister.”

Nyima also said their brother, a Buddhist monk in India, had been trying to come to Oakland for the proceedings but was denied a visa.

“He wants to come here so badly,” Nyima said.

Goh was ordered back to court on June 25 for a pretrial hearing before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Connie M. Panetta.

maria.laganga@latimes.com