THE Nigerian who sharpedgenews.com exclusively reported to be among the victims of Tuesday’s fatal college shooting at Oikos University in California has been identified as Doris Chibuko, a lawyer from Nigeria who returned to school to be a Licensed Practice Nurse (LPN) to enable her finance a desire to write the California bar examination.
The late Ms. Chibuko was a married mother of three children, ages 3, 5 and 8. Her husband, Ifeanyi Chibuko, who is a technician with AT&T, described her as a happy, warm and giving person. The couple met in college in Nigerian and married in 2002, before travelling to the United States.
According to the San Francisco newspaper website SFgate.com, mourners began showing up at Ifeanyi Chibuko’s door as soon as the terrible news began filtering through the tight-knit Nigerian community.
Ifeanyi’s wife, Doris Chibuko, had not been heard from since a gunman killed seven people at Oakland’s Oikos University, where she had been studying, but police did not confirm the family’s worst fears until late Tuesday afternoon.
“She was a very happy person, very caring, very loving,” said Ifeanyi Chibuko, her husband, as he stood inside the family home in the San Leandro hills, its walls covered with photographs of his wife and their three children. “She liked to spend time with her family. Right now I’m just trying to grieve.”
Doris Chibuko, 40, was born in the state of Enugu, in eastern Nigeria. She went to law school and worked as a lawyer in Nigeria.
Her family said she loved to cook and was mostly a housewife, but she also worked part time at Villa Fairmont Mental Health Rehabilitation Center in San Leandro. Doris planned to become a nurse. Her mother came to California from Nigeria to take care of the children while Doris studied at Oikos University.
She was two months away from graduating.
By nightfall Tuesday, as many as 100 people from all over California had crowded into the Chibuko home. Some mourners had even traveled from out of state. Traditional Nigerian food was piled high in the kitchen, and friends and relatives wept as they remembered the gifted mother and friend.
“For we Nigerians, when something hurts one family it hurts all of us,” said Christian Okeke, a longtime family friend from Nigeria and a law professor at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. “Yesterday, everyone was praying it wouldn’t be true, but now it is. It’s devastating, very devastating.”
Children were running around the house and several women were crying nearby. On the couch, looking straight ahead amid the hubbub was Doris Chibuko’s oldest daughter, a stunned look on her face.
Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference that One Goh, 43, 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,” 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 U.S. college campus since 32 people were killed by a student at Virginia Tech University in April 2007.
Police on Tuesday 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 on Tuesday.
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.
‘SPECIFIC INTENT TO KILL PEOPLE’
“We’ve learned that the suspect was upset with the administration at the school,” Jordan told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview.
“He was also upset that students … in the past when he attended the school, mistreated him, disrespected him and things of that nature,” he told the program. “We’ve learned this was a very chaotic, calculated and determined gentleman that came there with specific intent to kill people.”
Witnesses said Goh returned to the small college on Monday morning, entered a reception area and opened fire. He then walked into one of two classes in session, telling former classmates to line up and that he was going to kill them.
Goh, who police said acted alone, surrendered at a Safeway grocery store several miles from the college.
On Wednesday police expect to deliver the results of their investigation to prosecutors, who will decide what charges to file.
Paul Singh told Reuters that his sister, Devinder Kaur, 19, who was shot in the arm during the rampage, said that Goh had not been seen at the college in several months. When he burst into her classroom, he ordered the students to line up against a wall.
“‘Get in line and I’m going to kill you all,’ is what he said,” Singh said his sister told him. “They thought he was joking at first.”
Tashi Wangchuk said his wife, Dechen Yangzom, 28, was in another classroom when she heard gunfire.
“Out of instinct, she locked the door and turned off the lights. Then the guy came and banged on the door and shot several rounds at the door and then he left,” Wangchuk said. “The police said what she did was heroic.”
The Oikos killings came about a month after a student opened fire at a high school in Chardon, Ohio, killing three students and wounding two.
Oikos, which offers programs in theology, nursing, music and Asian medicine, describes itself on its website as having been started to provide the “highest standard education with Christian value and inspiration.”