Three staff members killed at California veterans facility
This is terrible:
A gunman and three female hostages were found dead at a military veterans home in Northern California on Friday evening, officials said, a grim end to a standoff that lasted nearly eight hours.
Shortly before 6 p.m., officers stormed into the room where the gunman had held the hostages at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville, said Chris Childs with the California Highway Patrol.
They found the gunman and the three hostages dead, he said. The coroner’s office identified the victims as Christine Loeber, 48; Jennifer Golick, 42; and Jennifer Gonzales, 29…
Loeber was the executive director of The Pathway Home and Golick worked there as a staff psychologist. Gonzales was a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans’ Affairs Healthcare System.
The gunman, identified as Albert Wong of Sacramento, had been a resident at the facility until about two weeks ago when he left or was asked to leave for as-yet-undiclosed reasons. The facility treats veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Therapists who work with potentially violent clients—and that’s a great many therapists—are always at risk for becoming the target of that violence, although it’s certainly not a common occurrence. I am actually rather surprised that more such incidents don’t occur, and I’m not talking solely or even in particular about working with veterans with PTSD.
My guess is that these victims were not chosen at random. We also have this report:
Golick’s father-in-law, Bob Golick, said in an interview that she had recently expelled Wong from the program.
The program was featured recently in a nonfiction book entitled Thank You For Your Service that was later made into a movie (read more here).
RIP.
The criminally insane will always be with us, but it is only in our insane era that the actions of the criminally insane are put forward as the reasons we should all become powerless before the criminally insane as individuals or as states.
Other sites are starting to come up on this story as well.
Liberty’s Torch: Incomplete Information
I’m guessing, from the last name of the gunman – Wong – that he is Asian in descent. Is he a native American, or immigrant? Not stated in reports.
He is identified as a veteran who served a year in Afghanistan. I’m wondering whether he served in a combat position, or even near an active combat zone. No word on his MOS.
He was said to have been expelled from one of the facility’s programs. They claim that the reasons are “unclear” – that immediately raises a red flag with me. That fuzzy language is often tied to deliberate decisions to suppress evidence.
They’d been not able to make contact with the perp for many hours, and yet 6:30 pm is the earliest that they could go in? “We’ve tried [calling the suspect] numerous times and been trying since 10:30 this morning,” Robertson said.” Were the women still alive while they were waiting to go in? Could more prompt action have saved them?
I’d give a lot to see the autopsy results on the perp and his victims. Did he kill them, or did too many bullets flying into the facility cause some unwanted injuries/death?
“At the earlier briefing, officials said there had been an exchange of gunfire between the suspect, who was armed with a rifle, and a sheriff’s deputy, with Robertson saying there were “many bullets fired.” MANY? At a person holding hostages?
Reminds me of Waco 1 and 2. Maybe the official story is just not accurate.