SANTA MONICA: The gunman who killed four people in a shooting rampage in Santa Monica before he was slain by police at a community college in the California seaside town was once a student there and had a brush with the law several years ago as a teenager, police said.
Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks also revealed that several students at the college survived Friday’s shootings by hiding in an interior room of the library and piling up heavy objects against the door as the gunman fired through the walls at them.
Police have disclosed little about the gunman or his motives, although the police chief said the suspect was carrying an estimated 1,300 rounds of ammunition with him at the time.
Seabrooks said the suspect would have turned 24 on Saturday, but she declined to reveal his identity, saying authorities wanted first to notify members of his family, who were out of the country. She acknowledged he had a “familial connection” to the scene of the house fire.
The Los Angeles Times cited several law enforcement sources in Washington and Los Angeles in identifying the gunman as John Zawahri. The newspaper cited other law enforcement sources as saying the suspect, who was believed to have lived with his mother, had suffered from mental-health problems in the past and was angry over his parents’ divorce.
Seabrooks said the gunman was enrolled in the college, possibly along with a family member, as recently as 2010, and she cited a previous instance in which he had “contact” with law enforcement as a juvenile in 2006. Reuters
