Rampage suspect was ‘hostile loner’
Neighbors describe rude man
THORNTON, Colo. — A man arrested on suspicion of fatally shooting three people inside a suburban Denver Walmart was described by neighbors yesterday as a hostile loner who cursed at them and often carried a shotgun in and out of his third-floor apartment.
Police arrested Scott Ostrem, 37, a day after the shooting that killed three people following a brief morning rush-hour chase in the northern Denver suburb of Thornton several blocks from his apartment building and about 5 miles from the Walmart.
Ostrem was handcuffed at a crowded intersection about 14 hours after the shooting, which killed two men and a woman and sent dozens of shoppers and workers fleeing in panic from the busy store.
Police spokesman Victor Avila declined to say whether Ostrem had a weapon.
Identified as the victims were Pamela Marques, 52, of Denver; Carlos Moreno, 66, of Thornton; and Victor Vasquez, 26, of Denver, Adams County Coroner Monica Broncucia-Jordan said. None were Walmart employees.
Police didn’t disclose a motive for the shooting, but residents of the Samuel Park Apartments building where Ostrem lived described him as a rude man who kept to himself.
Most of the building’s tenants talk to each other, but renter Teresa Muniz said Ostrem never returned her greetings and swore at people for sitting on exterior stairways and leaving laundry in communal machines.
Muniz said she sometimes saw Ostrem carrying a shotgun or a bow and set of arrows to and from the building.
Gerald Burnett, a 63-year-old retiree who lives in a first-floor unit, said he was sitting on the stairs drinking coffee one morning when Ostrem came down, told him to move and cursed at him.
Thornton, one of Denver’s larger suburbs, is a mostly bluecollar community where about a third of its 136,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino.
In September 2015, Ostrem filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and listed his income for the previous year as $47,028.00. He worked as a sheet metal fabricator at a roofing company in the town of Erie, about 25 miles north of Denver.
Witnesses said the shooter walked calmly into the Thornton Walmart late Wednesday, opened fire and fled.