Indian American student among wounded in US shooting

Washington, April 3 (IANS) A gunman who killed seven people at a California University ordered everyone to get up against a wall, and started shooting, according to a 19-year old Indian American student who was among the three wounded.

Davinder Kaur, 19, a US Army Reservist from Santa Clara, told relatives the gunman had been a student in her class but had been absent for months before reappearing Monday morning, Oakland Tribune reported.

"The people started running, and he started shooting," said Gurpreet Sahota, who relayed an account from his sister-in-law, a nursing student.

Some panicked when he drew a gun and began firing; she was shot in the arm as she helped a friend who had fallen on the classroom's floor. She then ran outside and called her brother, Paul Singh.

"She told me that a guy went crazy, and she got shot," Singh said. "She was running. She was crying; she was bleeding. It was wrong."

Police received a 911 call at 10.33 a.m. Art Richards, of Oakland, told the Tribune he arrived at the school right around that time to pick up a friend who's a nursing student there.

Richards said he saw a young woman wearing blue scrubs -- possibly Kaur -- emerge from bushes near the building, with blood running down her right arm from a wound near her elbow.

She told him the gunman had fired point-blank at a man's chest, and she had been grazed by a bullet before she fled the building.

Kaur's family, standing vigil as she was being treated at Alameda County Medical Center's Highland Hospital, said they saw other victims as well: a man shot in the shoulder and a woman shot in her hand and back.

Kaur's father, Balvir Singh, via translation by Sahota, said her family is "lucky she is alive. We are thankful that God saved her." The gunman, he said, "should get the full consequences that he deserves for doing this to these people."

Oakland Police have arrested the alleged shooter identified as 43-year-old One Goh, an American of Korean origin.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)