RIVERRATMIKE
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Lake Havasu City/Parker, AZ
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Posted: June 30 2003,1:27 pm |
Post # 5 |
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Read all about it here.......
By ZAHEERA WAHID, JOHN GITTELSOHN and HANG NGUYEN
The Orange County Register
Linda Peters left her husband for just a moment to pick up a carton of orange juice. Tom Peters headed down the aisle in the other direction.
It was the Irvine couple's weekly Sunday shopping trip to Albertsons.
Suddenly, Linda Peters heard a yell.
"I turned around. (Someone) was hitting Tom with what I thought was a stick," Linda Peters said.
She immediately recognized the assailant as the man who bagged her groceries every week.
And the "stick" he used was actually a samurai-style sword that slashed cuts into her husband's head and arms.
Around her, people were fleeing and screaming. Customers and employees ran out of the store, some with blood dripping down their faces.
Peters, shaken and teary-eyed, recalled the nightmare a few hours later from a bench outside Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.
Inside, Tom Peters, 54, was being treated for cuts to his hand, shoulder and head. Another customer and an Albertsons employee were also undergoing surgery for cuts.
Back at Albertsons, two employees lie dead on the floor.
And the sword-wielding bagger, Joe Parker, was dead after being shot by police.
Shocked family members, workers and grocery store customers gathered behind the yellow police tape in the parking lot of the shopping center all day seeking answers about what had happened in the neighborhood.
The drama started unfolding at about 9:30 a.m., when Parker, a bagger for about 2 1/2 years, entered the store after being absent from work for two weeks.
He wore a black trench coat and his trademark green beret. On his way in, Parker, who was mentally disturbed, met a co-worker who had just finished the night shift.
The pair shook hands and exchanged a few words before parting. Parker, witnesses said, walked to the back of the store. About 50 employees and customers mingled in the many aisles.
Near the stock room, Parker met Judy Fleming and John Nutting.
He whipped out a 3-foot sword and for unknown reasons, started lashing out at his co-workers. He killed Fleming and Nutting, and then chased after customers, witnesses said.
Patti Pancoast, an office manager at the Albertsons, "hid in an office behind locked doors" during the rampage, said her daughter Paige Pancoast.
At 9:36, 911 dispatchers received a call reporting gunshots at the grocery store.
When officers arrived at 9:39 a.m., "they saw some people coming out of the store with injuries," Irvine police Lt. Jeff Love said.
At least four officers entered the store, and one of the officers confronted Parker and shot him. He died a couple of hours later at Western Medical Center.
Police cordoned off the area, and about 20 investigators from the Irvine Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney's Office converged on the scene to figure out what led to three violent deaths and three injuries.
About 40 people who were in the store during the slashings were piled into an Orange County Transit District bus and driven to the Irvine Police Department for questioning.
There, worried family members waited anxiously for their loved ones to be released.
Adrian Elizondo, 28, waited for his wife Francesca Soto, a produce department worker for three months.
Elizondo of Santa Ana was upset that the store had no security guards on the premises.
"I don't want her to go back," he said. "There's two people passed away. No security out front. They think they don't need this just because it's Irvine."
At the market, regular store customers were stunned to find out about the bloodshed at "their" Albertsons.
"This is a very nice neighborhood," said Patricia Guiso, a frequent shopper.
"We were extremely (shocked) when this happened," said her husband, Jack Guiso. "We're here almost three Sundays out of the month at 10 o'clock. Everyone's so friendly and so nice."
The Northwoods Shopping Center is a bustling strip mall filled with diners, a coffee shop, a nail spa and other businesses.
Cars drove in and out of the center Sunday, with some people waving to acquaintances while others clustered together and cried as they learned of the slayings.
"It's a terrible thing," said Dave Wessler, 58, of Irvine. "It just shows you this can happen anywhere."
Sharon Lyman cried as she waited to see her son, Ricky Cherry, 26, a cashier.
"He called me and I thought he was joking when he said a guy came in with a machete and started hitting people," Lyman said. "He knew the machete guy."
Cherry wasn't the only one who remembered the bag clerk. Many who passed through the shopping center had some memory.
"I talked to him a few times and smoked a couple of cigarettes with him," said Joey Serrao, a customer. "He just mumbled."
Parker was known to stroll down grocery aisles talking to himself and often mumbled while bagging goods. He had also become religious in the past few years and sometimes handed out religious material to co-workers.
"This was a sick person, and Albertsons was nice enough to give him work," Wessler said. "I hope that (type of practice) continues."
Workers said all the employees got along well and there have never been any problems at the store. Even Parker was known to crack jokes with co-workers.
But his schizophrenia made several people uncomfortable, they said.
"We all kind of had a weird feeling," said Karl Wieduwilt, 24, who works in the service deli and had worked with Parker as a bagger for two years.
"I would always joke around with my co-workers that he would come in and shoot people up one day," Wieduwilt said.
When Wieduwilt heard what had happened, "Parker was the first guy that came into (his) head," he said.
Wieduwilt said returning to work and serving customers will be the toughest part of all.
"It's going to be hard for us," Wieduwilt said. "We had two or three people die."
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11-24-2024 Three Word Post.....The Next Generation.... (Rep.#19,435) from: BigDog
I'm sure there were signs he was losin it.
I am very sorry for the families, friends, and co-workers of the victims.
