THE incessant ringing of the doorbell, breaking the silence at 2:00hrs on Tuesday told Carlyle and Enid Denbow, an elderly remigrant Guyanese couple, of Charlotte Street, Georgetown, that something must have gone terribly wrong. But the last thing they expected to hear when they opened up was the horrible news that their daughter Judith, residing in California, had been shot and killed. The messenger was their cousin Walter.
Judith Seymour, 54, a student of Oakland’s Oikos University, California, U.S.A., was one of seven persons killed in a senseless shootout at her school, waged by a former  nursing student who had, four months before, been expelled from the institution for ‘anger management’ issues.
A Reuters report coming out of California quoted the Oakland police spokesman, Johnna Watson, as saying that seven people had been killed and three others wounded. The three were initially hospitalised and later discharged.
According to the report, “In what was the deadliest US school shooting in five years …a gunman opened fire at a private Christian college in California on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding three others, after telling former classmates to get in line … ‘I’m going to kill you all’.”
Monday’s gruesome gun attack on the students was said to have been surpassed in gravity, at a U.S. school over the last five years, only by the incident in which a Virginia Tech student shot and killed 32 people and himself in a 2007 massacre on that campus.
The man who waged the senseless attack on the students was identified as Goh, an American Korean. Police said he surrendered at a Safeway grocery store several miles away from the scene of the shooting at Oakland’s Oikos University, which appears to cater largely to the area’s Korean community, the report said. More information coming out of California yesterday said that the man may have targeted an administrator and students at the College, he believed to have mistreated or been unkind to him.  However, the targeted administrator was not in place at the time of the attack.
Goh was said to have entered a reception area of the college at mid-morning and opened fire before walking into one of two classes in session and spraying the room with bullets.
Oikos, which offers programmes 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.”
Meanwhile, here in Guyana, parents of Judith Seymour, nee Denbow, remain inconsolable, as they continue to agonize over the loss of one they remember as a ‘loving, caring, adorable daughter to them’.
Sobbing as she spoke, Mrs. Denbow recalled that Judith, their eldest of three children, was in the midst of preparing to travel home to Guyana on vacation in June. She had twice visited here in 2011, and was optimistic about returning in June.  The Denbow family, who previously lived in Manchester, Corentyne, migrated to New York 42 years ago when Judith was just 12. She was educated in New York, and following in the career path of her parents, who were both health professionals, qualified herself as a certified nursing assistant, before moving on to become a senior Tax Analyst.
At 53, Seymour, who lived in San Jose, California, resumed a career in nursing and was looking forward to graduating from Oikos University in June and getting her license before paying another visit to Guyana.
Seymour’s fiancée and partner of eight years, Tim Brown, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said that she regularly commuted to the College in Oakland and sometimes to the state prison in Vacaville, where she had clinical training.
Brown, on Tuesday, said it was in disbelief and shock that he watched the horror on television, after being informed about it by a friend whose source was a nursing instructor.       Brown recalled: “She was very excited, happy and proud” at completing her training in two months.” She had a passion for nursing. Her father, who once worked as a mate on the Transport and Harbours Department vessels in Guyana, on migrating to New York, took up nursing, and so did her mother, and they all made splendid care givers.
Said Tim:  “Everyone who met her knew that she was down to earth, they loved her instantly, and they could see her gentle, loving nature.”
Over the last two days, Judy’s parents and other relatives in Guyana were literally glued to the telephone as they, mustering all the strength and courage they could, sought to be, not only grandparents on this occasion, but mother and father – offering comfort to Judy’s two children, Camella and Bryan.
And in keeping with the expressed wish of their daughter, Mr and Mrs. Seymour yesterday said that the family had agreed to bring her body back home for burial.
“Whenever I die, I want my body to be brought back home to Guyana,” she would say.