Oakland: “heavy-set Asian man” shoots up Christian university, kills five….

Update:

Make it seven!

Oakland school shooting: five dead at Christian university

Five people have been confirmed dead and several others injured after a gunman opened fire inside a small Christian university in California.

Police have confirmed they have a suspect in custody.

The khaki-clad attacker, described as a heavy-set Asian man in his 40s, remained on the loose for several hours after he opened fire inside inside a lecture room where a nursing class was being held at the religious Oikos University, in East Oakland, California, at around 10.40 local time.

The college is popular with students from the Catholic Korean community.

Afterwards, four bodies outside the school could be seen covered in tarpaulin, while rescue workers removed others from inside the building on stretchers.

Nearby Highland Hospital said it had treated four victims following the incident, and others were still being taken out of the university hours after the shooting stopped.

Students were ordered to evacuate the building in ones and twos over the space of an hour as a police SWAT team took positions around the building before smashing their way in through windows and doors using a sledgehammer.

Eye witness Angie Johnson, 52, of San Leandro, said she was doing errands in a nearby industrial complex when she saw a young woman run out of the university with blood pouring from her arm, crying: “I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot.”

Mrs Johnson said she waited with the woman for medical help to arrive, and was told that the gunman was a man in her nursing class who stood up and shot one person at point blank range in the chest before spraying the room with bullets.

“She said he looked crazy all the time,” Mrs Johnson said. “But they never knew how far he would go.”

The victim “had a hole in her right arm the size of a silver dollar with blood coming down,” she added.

According to its website, Oikos offers classes in religious studies, music and vocational nursing, and particularly caters to students of Korean descent.