Seven people are dead after a shooter entered the Christian school in Oakland, Calif., and opened fire. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
By msnbc.com staff and news services
Updated at 7:55 p.m. ET: A gunman who killed seven people and wounded three others at a small Christian college in Oakland, Calif. on Monday first ordered students to line up against a wall and then pulled a handgun, witnesses told the Oakland Tribune.
"The people started running and he started shooting," said Gurpreet Sahota, who relayed an account to the Tribune from his sister-in-law, Dawinder Kaur.
The suspect, identified by the school as an ex-nursing student at Oikos University, had been absent for months before the incident, students in the class told the newspaper.
Kaur, 19, a nursing student was shot in her right arm near her elbow, the report said.
The suspect was arrested at an Alameda shopping center about five miles from the school, police said.
According to the Tribune, Safeway grocery store employees who did not give their names said the suspect had told a store staffer that he had shot people and needed to be arrested.
Customer Lisa Resler, who told the paper that she saw a young Asian man being handcuffed at the store, described him as being "very sedated."
Initial reports of the shooting said five had been killed. The City of Oakland later announced a higher toll.
"Ten people were injured during this morning's shooting, 7 of which are fatalities," Cynthia Perkins, a public safety official, said in a statement.
The Oakland Police Department said a possible suspect was in custody. "No imminent public safety threat appears to exist in immediate area," the department said on its Twitter account.
Some of the wounded at Oikos University were taken away by ambulance, while others were cared for outside the building, the Oakland Tribune reported.
The school's director said the suspect was no longer enrolled at Oikos, but he was unsure if the man had been expelled or dropped out, the Tribune reported.
Police had been looking for a gunman described as a Korean man in his 40s who allegedly carried out the attack on Oikos University, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The man had a heavy build and was wearing khaki clothing, police said.
Angie Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle that she saw a young woman leave the building with blood coming from her arm and crying: "I've been shot. I've been shot."
The injured woman said the shooter was a man in her nursing class who got up and shot one person at point-blank range in the chest before spraying the room with bullets, Johnson said.
"She said he looked crazy all the time," she said the victim told her, "but they never knew how far he would go."
In its web site, Oikos says it aims to provide "a Christian education based on solid Christian doctrine and ideology."
The institution, established in 2008, does not appear on the U.S. Department of Education list of accredited postsecondary institutions and programs. It has California state accreditation to award degrees in theology, music, Asian medicine and nursing.
Oikos' annual revenue hovers around $1 million a year, according to publicly-available 990 tax forms for non-profit organizations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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