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This article has been assessed not ready for publication.Please see the review comments on the collaboration page. When these things have been done, and the article is ready to be reviewed and fact-checked, Submit for review?Template:Assistant/submit/formUnited States: Former patient kills three hostages at California veterans’ psychiatric center, suspect deadSubmit for review by changing the |
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Please see the review comments on the collaboration page. When these things have been done, and the article is ready to be reviewed and fact-checked, Submit for review?Template:Assistant/submit/formUnited States: Former patient kills three hostages at California veterans’ psychiatric center, suspect deadSubmit for review by changing the |
Sunday, March 11, 2018
On Friday, three people were shot dead after a former resident at The Pathway Home, a center in Yountville, California treating ex-military post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sufferers, walked into a staff party and took hostages. The gunman, later identified as Albert Wong, was ultimately also found dead of a gunshot wound.
Wong drove a rented car to the center and shortly after 10 am local time (1800 UTC), dressed in black and armed with a semi-automatic rifle, took some of the attendees at a leaving party hostage. The first call to the emergency 911 number was made at about 10:20; the dispatcher reported that he had released three of the hostages, but about ten minutes after the initial call, a sheriff’s deputy reported shots fired. One Napa County deputy exchanged gunshots with Wong; authorities have said that may have given other hostages a chance to escape, or he may have released them. Wong was reported contained in one room at 10:37. The campus was evacuated and surrounded by law enforcement from a number of agencies, but there were no more shots and no response from Wong. At about 6:00 that evening, according to the California Highway Patrol, three hostages were found shot dead, as was Wong, whether by suicide or from the deputy’s shots has not been reported. Investigators said that an explosives-sniffing dog alerted on Wong’s car, but officials have not made any statement about whether this was a reason for delaying going in to find the hostages; they have said that the three were probably killed at an early stage in the events.
The three victims were all women: Christine Loeber, 48, was the executive director of the home; Jen Golick, 42, was its clinical director; and Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 36, was a psychologist on the staff of the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System and also worked with PsychArmor, a nonprofit group, to create a toolkit for college campuses to assist students with PTSD. She was in her last trimester of pregnancy.
Wong, 36, was a decorated veteran who served in the infantry in Afghanistan. He had been in treatment at the center for about a year but two weeks ago, knives were found in his possession and he was expelled from the program. His brother Tyrone Lampkin said Wong had been angry and said he “wanted to get back at them”, but what he had mentioned was to “talk to them, yell at them, not to kill them”.
The Pathway Home is a ten-year-old in-patient center treating veterans with brain injuries, depression and addictions as well as PTSD, housed at the Veterans Home of California in Yountville, a small town in the wine country a little more than 50 miles north of San Francisco. Founded as a last resort center for intensive treatment of veterans who had not been helped by other approaches, it transitioned in 2015 to providing care to those not yet in crisis, including veterans enrolled at Napa Community College. The Veterans Home is the largest in the United States, with more than 900 residents.