Veteran in siege had ‘trouble’ after war return
YOUNTVILLE, California — The man who killed three women after a daylong siege at a Northern California veterans home had trouble adjusting to regular life after he returned from the Afghanistan War and had been kicked out of the treatment program designed to help him.
As family and friends of the victims tried to make sense of the tragedy, authorities offered little information on Saturday about why Albert Wong, 36, attacked The Pathway Home and whether he targeted his victims.
Officials said Wong had served with the US Army on active duty from May 2010 to August 2013 and spent a year in Afghanistan. He received four medals including an Afghanistan campaign medal and was awarded an Expert Marksmanship Badge Rifle, the Pentagon said.
Wong had been a patient of The Pathway Home, a program at the Yountville complex for former service members suffering post-traumatic with stress disorder after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The San Francisco Chronicle, citing unnamed sources, said he had been asked to leave the program two weeks ago.
Yountville Mayor John Dunbar, who also serves as a board member of the Pathway Home, said the facility and the town mourned the loss of the three women.
“We also lost one of our heroes, who clearly had demons that resulted in the terrible tragedy that we all experienced here,” he said.
Authorities said Wong went to the campus about 85 kilometers north of San Francisco on Friday morning, slipping into a going-away party for some employees of facility.
Police said a sheriff’s deputy exchanged gunshots with Wong around 10:30 am but after that nothing was heard from him.
Authorities later found four bodies, including Wong.