SANTA CRUZ >> A judge sentenced a 55-year-old former Santa Rosa man to 15 years in state prison Wednesday for attempting to murder a Cabrillo College student with a hunting knife in 2018, as outlined in an agreeded-upon plea deal struck last month.

On Oct. 31, 2018, Steve Wooding arrived on campus at lunchtime and stabbed a student in the cafeteria in the back before he was tackled and restrained by faculty and students until police could take him into custody. According to law enforcement reports, Wooding told the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office that he planned to travel to the school’s campus to assault someone in an effort to get the media’s attention.

In the months before the apparently unprovoked attack of a stranger, Wooding had been sending recurrent emails to a handful of people, including the local media, airing his concerns about what he said was a conspiracy involving a Cabrillo College instructor in 1994.

Wooding had attended Cabrillo for five semesters, from 1989 to 1992, according to court filings. In 1994, he returned to campus, where he assaulted an instructor and caused him head injuries and a broken jaw. Wooding also pepper sprayed students in the class. Wooding later was ordered by the courts to undergo multiple stints under state hospital medical care.

Wooding pleaded no contest Sept. 11 to attempted murder, two counts of assault with great bodily injury and possessing a knife on a college campus.

During his sentencing before Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Denine Guy, Wooding gave no statement to the court and no others stood to offer victim impact statements. Cabrillo College President Matt Wetstein and Dean of Student Services Michelle Donahue attended the hearing to request that Wooding be barred from the campus pending future parole.

Wooding has garnered nearly seven years of time-served credit, which will reduce time spent in prison to a little more than eight years.