Source material:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/justice/california-college-gunman/?hpt=hp_t2
What
would compel a man
to
take
his
father's and his brother's lives
and
then spray bullets at
his
former college,
killing
three other people
in
the next 13 minutes?
The
Friday afternoon
R
A
M
P
A
G
E
in
Santa Monica, California, ended
only when
police shot
dead
the suspect, John Zawahri.
Over
the weekend,
bits and pieces emerged about 23-year-old.
But
with his death –
a
day shy of his 24th birthday –
the
central question may remain unanswered.
He
had suffered mental health issues
and
was hospitalized a few years ago
after
allegedly talking about harming someone,
a
law enforcement source said.
Police had contact with him in 2006 –
but
because he was in high school, and therefore a juvenile
at
the time,
police
couldn't disclose more.
And
as recently as 2010,
he
attended Santa Monica College –
where
he met his chaotic end in the school library.
Police
say the spate of violence
that left this beachfront city reeling on Friday
involved as many as six incidents over 13
minutes.
It started at the Zawahri family house on Yorkshire Avenue
shortly
before noon, and ended a mile away in the college library
where
students were studying for finals.
Officers
were dispatched to the house to respond
to reports of shots fired.
There, they found the 1,000-square-foot home
in flames.
Inside, firefighters would later find two bodies
in a back room –
that
of Zawahri's father, Samir, and his brother Chris.
Both
had been shot.
Outside
the house,
police
came across
an injured woman who too had been shot:
Deborah Fine.
Fine
told CNN she was driving
when
she saw the gunman pull over another woman
and
hold a rifle
to
her head.
"I
thought to myself,
'What
are you doing?
Why are you pointing this gun at her?'
And so I put on my accelerator,
I
hit the gas,
and I got in between the two of them,"
she said.
The
bold move quickly turned the gunman's attention to Fine.
"I'll
never forget his eyes.
They were just
so intense and so cold," she said.
"That's
when he raised his rifle."
The
bullets struck
Fine
three
to four times
across
her body.
With
blood
pooling
around her,
she slumped over
and played dead
in hopes that the gunman would stop.
When
neighbors rushed to the scene,
Fine had one plea:
"Please,
I don't want to die.
I have twins.
Just please open my car door," she said.
Fine
still
has
pieces of shrapnel inside her body.
Fine
had interrupted
the
gunman's carjacking.
But
the gunman's rampage
was
just beginning.
He
got into the carjacked vehicle
and
forced his victim to drive the short distance
to
Santa Monica College.
During
their ride, 911 calls poured in,
keeping
police on the gunman's path.
As
the car headed toward the campus of the community college,
where
30,000 students are registered,
he opened fire on a passing bus, slightly
wounding three people.
He
then got out and shot into a red Ford Explorer,
carrying 26-year-old Marcela Franco
and
her father, 68-year-old Carlos Navarro Franco.
They
were on campus to get textbooks for Marcela.
Carlos
Franco worked as a groundskeeper at the college.
He
died shortly after the shooting.
"Carlos
worked really hard.
He
worked beyond the age of retirement...
so
that he could support his daughters and especially Marcela,"
who
was about to graduate, relative Margret Quinonez Perez said.
Marcela
Franco wanted to be a clinical psychologist.
She was taken off life support Sunday.
"We
spent last 48 hours like (in) a cocoon.
Nobody else in there
--
just us," Quinonez Perez said.
"We
were loving her,
telling
her how much we loved her.
We're
going to miss her."
The
Santa Monica College Foundation established
to
help the family.
Relatives
want to give
the
father and daughter proper burials.
"'Broken'
is
not a strong enough word to describe us," Quinonez Perez said.
After
shooting into the SUV,
the
gunman abandoned his hijacked vehicle –
leaving
the driver unhurt.
Dressed
in black and wearing a ballistic vest,
he
then walked the campus, "shooting as he went along,"
Santa
Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said.
Outside
the school library, he saw a woman
and
"executed
her,"
Seabrooks
said.
Her
death was the fifth of the rampage.
Her name was not released.
By
all accounts,
the
gunman was ready to inflict
maximum harm.
He
had about
1,300
rounds of ammunition
and
multiple firearms, Seabrooks said.
He
went into the school library
and
fired several times
at
terrified patrons who were hiding in a safe room.
Police
said it was "miraculous"
that
they were not wounded.
Jasmine
Franco was in a classroom next to the library –
waiting
for her English class to start.
"You
could hear rumbling,
a
lot of rumbling,
it
sounded like an earthquake or something,"
she
said, referring to the sounds of gunfire
mixed with the footfalls of people running.
Inside
the library, Priscilla Morales and her friends hid.
"I
was so scared and thought literally
I
was going to die,"
she
said.
By
then,
the
gunman had returned to the main area of the library,
he
was met with three police officers.
"Drop
it!" Morales said she heard police say.
Then
she heard gunshots
and a man's
screams.
Officers had
shot and killed Zawahri.
The
rampage was over,
but
the questions remain.
