(GOLETA, Calif. - AP) The woman who gunned down six people inside a mail processing plant may have killed a former neighbor a few hours before the attack, sheriff’s officials said Wednesday.
Sheriff’s officials in Santa Barbara County say they found a bullet casing in the neighbor’s apartment that matches those found at the postal facility.
“Evidence and circumstances of both crimes show distinct correlations between the two,” said Jeff Klapakis with the Santa Barbara County sheriff’s department.
The body was discovered Tuesday evening at a Santa Barbara condominium complex where former postal employee Jennifer Sanmarco once lived. The victim died from a gunshot wound to the head on Monday, Klapakis said.
Late Monday night, Sanmarco shot six postal employees at a mail processing plant, killing five before committing suicide. The sixth person remains hospitalized in critical condition.
Interviews with authorities in this picturesque coastal community and with people in New Mexico, where Sanmarco moved in 2004, give a picture of a woman exhibiting increasingly bizarre behavior after losing her job.
“We weren’t sure what she was going to do next,” said Terri Gallegos, deputy clerk for the city of Milan, N.M., where Sanmarco applied for a business license in 2004 for a publication called “The Racist Press” that she said she planned to launch. Another time she said she wanted to register a cat food business.
During one meeting, Gallegos said, Sanmarco carried on a conversation with herself “like she was arguing with someone but there was no one there.”
Last March, office workers called authorities after the 44-year-old woman made what Gallegos described as a rude allegation. Other times, Gallegos said, Sanmarco would come in and simply stare at one employee in particular.
In June, police in nearby Grants talked to her after someone at a gas station called to complain of nudity, Police Chief Marty Vigil said. Sanmarco was dressed when officers arrived.
U.S. Postal Inspector Randy DeGasperin told reporters Tuesday that Sanmarco left the mail facility on a medical leave in 2003 after her co-workers expressed concerns she might hurt herself. He said police removed her from the building one time.
“She was not making any threats or anything of that nature,” DeGasperin said. “It was more for her safety.”
Authorities said it was unclear whether Sanmarco targeted specific employees when she arrived at the postal center about 9 p.m. Monday. But DeGasperin said “chances are” she knew the people she was shooting at.
“According to witnesses from the scene, she had a 9 mm pistol and reloaded at least once during her rampage,” said Santa Barbara County Sheriff James Anderson.
Killed were Ze Fairchild, 37, and Maleka Higgins, 28, both of Santa Barbara; Nicola Grant, 42, and Guadalupe Swartz, 52, both of Lompoc; and Dexter Shannon, 57, of Oxnard. The wounded woman was identified as Charlotte Colton, 44, of Santa Barbara; she remained hospitalized early Wednesday in critical condition.
Higgins had just returned from maternity leave about a month ago and leaves behind a baby girl and her husband. “She was a talker. There was not a moment she was quiet,” said colleague and friend Lexi Bushnell told the Santa Barbara News-Press. “She loved to lighten things up.”
Swartz was emerging from a dark period after losing her husband, Donald, three years ago to cancer, according to friend Darlene Skura. “She was becoming more active, starting to get on with her life,” Skura told the Los Angeles Times in Wednesday’s editions.
Grant’s neighbors said it was not uncommon to see the married mother of two shooting hoops with her children. “She was such a joy,” said friend and neighbor Leslie Brown. “When you talked to her, she just glowed.”
Police said Sanmarco entered the sprawling Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center by driving through a gate behind another car. She gained entry to the building by taking an employee’s identification badge at gunpoint. That worker was not hurt.
Only about 80 of the approximately 300 people who work at the mail-sorting center were on hand when Sanmarco arrived. Authorities said many of them fled to a fire station across the street when the shooting began.
“I was dumping mail on a belt when the gunshots suddenly (went) ‘boom, boom, boom, boom!” said postal worker Alger Busante, 56, of Santa Barbara.
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“Mass murderer Jennifer San Marco kept a diary of disputes with people, more than a hundred pages long, meticulously documenting slights and petty offenses against her that may have fueled her Goleta [postal] shooting spree, the News-Press has learned. Although the details of the journal have not been released, investigators who have reviewed it said it offers the clearest motive yet for the disturbed 44-year-old’s decision to kill seven people before taking her own life on Jan. 30.”