A judge sentenced a former Cal Poly student to over six years in state prison for firing guns on campus in 2023, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday.
He’s already served the equivalent of four years toward that sentence.
Charles Hojaboom, 21, pleaded no contest in August to shooting at an inhabited dwelling, discharging a firearm with gross negligence, vandalism and five counts of possessing a loaded firearm on a college campus, the office’s press release said.
Hojaboom shot firearms on campus four separate times between June 10, 2023, and Nov. 11, 2023, the release said. Three of those incidents involved shooting outdoors, and one involved Hojaboom firing a bolt action rifle in his Poly Canyon Village apartment, which went through the ceiling and into the room above. No one was injured.
READ MORE: Students arrested on weapon charges allegedly shot guns on campus four times
Judge Catherine Swysen gave Hojaboom less than the court’s maximum penalty of seven years and six months, which District Attorney Dan Dow was seeking, lowering it to a more lenient six years and two months, the release said. The court awarded him 1,472 days — or four years and 11 days — of custody credits toward his sentence.
“Gun violence like this will be vigorously prosecuted to appropriately punish the individual and to deter others from committing such crimes,” Dow said in the press release.
Due to changing state laws, officials do not know if he will be eligible for early release, the release said.
Hojaboom will now have two strikes, both from this case, under California’s Three Strikes Law, the release said. This means if he is convicted of another violent felony in his lifetime, he would be eligible for a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
One strike was because Hojaboom pleaded no contest to firing a weapon in an inhabited dwelling and the other because he admitted that he “personally used” a deadly or dangerous weapon related to his charge of discharging a firearm with gross negligence, according to the release.
Police arrested Hojaboom and another former Cal Poly student Brandon Pham on Nov. 11, 2023 after an officer heard gunshots and found the pair near a campus sign with bullet holes in it carrying a shotgun, a concealed piston and a knife.
Pham was sentenced to nearly seven months in September 2024 after pleading no contest to three felony counts of possession of a loaded firearm on a college campus and felony shooting at an inhabited dwelling.
READ MORE: Cal Poly student who fired guns on campus sentenced to seven months in jail
After Hojaboom and Pham were arrested, police found several other weapons and 650 rounds of ammunition in their Poly Canyon Village apartments, according to previous Mustang News coverage.
Both were banned from campus after their arrests.