Yountville, California - A former US serviceman opened fire at a California veterans home where he
had undergone treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder,
taking three employees hostage in an all-day standoff that ended
when police found him and his female captives dead.
"This is a tragic piece of news, one that we were really
hoping we wouldn't have to come before the public to give,"
California Highway Patrol spokesman Chris Childs told reporters
outside the facility in Yountville, a picturesque town located
in the heart of Napa Valley's wine country about 60 miles (100
km) north of San Francisco.
Despite repeated efforts by police negotiators to
communicate with the suspect throughout the day, authorities
said they had failed to make contact with the gunman after he
exchanged gunfire with a sheriff's deputy at the outset of the
confrontation.
"We credit him (the deputy) with saving the lives of others
in the area by eliminating the ability of the suspect to go out
and find other victims," Childs said.
Authorities later identified the gunman as 36-year-old
Albert Wong, a former patient of Pathway Home, a program housed
at the veterans complex for former service members suffering
PTSD after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The San Francisco Chronicle, citing unidentified sources,
said Wong, who lived in Sacramento, had been asked to leave the
program two weeks ago.
The three hostages all worked for the program. They were
later identified as Pathway Home Executive Director Christine
Loeber, 48, the program's clinical director, therapist Jen
Golick, 42, and Jennifer Gonzales, 29, a psychologist with the
San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.
"These brave women were accomplished professionals,
dedicated to their careers of serving our nation's veterans,
working closely with those of the greatest need of attention,"
Pathway Home said in a statement.
The siege came less than a month after a former student with
an assault-style rifle killed 17 people at a Florida high
school. That massacre touched off a student-led drive for new
restrictions on gun sales to curb mass shootings that have
occurred with frightening frequency in the United States over
the past few years.
The Veterans Home of California, a residence for about 1,000
aging and disabled U.S. military veterans, is the largest
facility of its kind in the United States. The Pathway Home is
housed in a separate building on the campus.
LOCKDOWN
The entire complex, its staff and residents were placed
under a security lockdown during the siege, which began at about
10:30 a.m. local time (1830 GMT Friday) and ended nearly eight
hours later.
Childs said officers who eventually entered the room where
the hostages were being held found all four bodies there. He did
not elaborate on how the victims or gunman had died.
The incident began when the gunman calmly walked into the
Pathway Home building carrying a rifle during a going-away party
for one of the employees, according to Larry Kamer, the husband
of one of the program's administrators, Devereaux Smith.
Kamer, who volunteers at the home and was acting as an
unofficial spokesman for the facility, said his wife told him by
telephone during the siege that the gunman had allowed her and
three other women to leave the room where the party was taking
place, while three female employees remained behind as hostages.
The Napa County sheriff's deputy who confronted the gunman
had arrived at the scene within four minutes of the first
reports of gunfire, Sheriff John Robertson said.
A resident of the home, identified as Rod Allen by the CBS
television affiliate KPIX-TV, said the gunman took the hostages
after allowing some people at the party to leave. He fired about
30 shots, the resident said.
James Musson, a 75-year-old Army veteran and resident of the
facility, told Reuters many who lived there voiced concerns
about lax security, saying visitors could walk in and out
without restriction and that public safety officers were not
armed.
"There might be something that might provide a greater degree
of security, I don't know if this event will trigger something
like that," he said.