Report reveals Fiamma shooter’s path
He singled out certain workers, witnesses say
Armed with a 9 mm handgun, John Neumann Jr. walked into his former job around 7:50 a.m.
He ignored an employee who greeted him, walked up to his ex-boss, 69-year-old Robert Snyder, who was sitting at his desk, and shot him dead. Neumann then “singled out” and shot to death four more former co-workers before killing himself, documents show.
The details were part of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office’s final report on the June 5, 2017, mass shooting at Fiamma Inc., a business on Forsyth Road near Hanging Moss Road that sold awnings for RVs and campers. The report was completed last week.
After shooting Snyder, Neumann walked to the front office where Kevin Lawson, 47; Jeff Roberts, 57; and Brenda Montanez Crespo, 44, had their desks, the report said. They tried to run away, but he caught Lawson and Roberts between the break room and front office.
He shot Lawson eight times, including once in the back of
the head, and shot Roberts twice in the head. Deputies found Montanez Crespo’s body in the break room next to a water cooler with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, documents said.
The fifth victim, 53-year-old Kevin Clark, was found with four gunshot wounds in another work room. Paramedics took Clark to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Neumann, 45, killed himself before deputies arrived.
Witnesses said Neumann singled out certain employees.
“I think the man was very sure what he went for,” survivor Jorge Piraino told deputies.
Temp worker Patricia Lynch, who had started working there about two months earlier, arrived to work not long after the shooting began. She said she heard “pops” but assumed it was machines making the noise. Lynch tried to get in one entrance, but it was locked, so she walked to another, before hearing more “pops” and realizing it might be gunfire.
She walked inside and found Snyder dead. Then she heard a male voice behind her say, “Get out! Get out!”
She turned around and saw Neumann “shaking” a gun at her.
Lynch said she put her hands up, and he again told her to get out. She then ran outside, unharmed.
Worker Sheila McIntyre was walking out of the bathroom when she heard a shot. She ran to the front, where she saw Lawson on the floor in a pool of blood before exiting unharmed.
“Somebody shot them,” she screamed at an employee at a business across the street. “They’re just lying on the floor.”
Seven employees survived the shooting.
The report also details more about Neumann’s past and his trouble at the company.
McIntyre said Neumann was always “upset and moody” and didn’t like being told what to do. Snyder had described him as “weird,” his wife said.
After he was fired in April 2017 for stealing awnings and selling them, he had to be escorted out of the building. Employees were told to lock the doors of the business and not let him in.
McIntyre told deputies Neumann threatened the business after he was fired.
“He was like that,” she said. “And he said, ‘I just take one bullet and do it.’ ”
Another employee also accused Neumann of battering him in 2014.
Neumann was born in New York and joined the U.S. Army in 1991. He was honorably discharged for not meeting height and weight requirements in 1993.
He received the second best sharp shooter rating in training, but never had any tours of duty.
Neumann’s sister, Catherine Van Horn, told investigators she was estranged from him for several years. She said she believed her brother suffered from mental illness but never was diagnosed. Van Horn said her brother “was mentally abused by their mother” when he was younger “and it made him an angry person.”
Van Horn said her mother, Dallas Neumann-Langland, was in “denial” about Neumann’s issues. Neumann-Langland told investigators she also had not spoke to him in years, the report said.
“She was clearly upset and continued to apologize for what her son did,” the report said.