Vet in California attack had trouble after return from war
YOUNTVILLE, Calif. — 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 Saturday about why Albert Wong, 36, attacked The Pathway Home and whether he targeted his victims. Those who knew the women said they had dedicated their lives to helping those suffering like Wong, and they would’ve been in a good position to assist him had Friday’s hostage situation ended differently.
“We lost three beautiful people yesterday,” Yountville Mayor John Dubar said. “We also lost one of our heroes who clearly had demons that resulted in the terrible tragedy that we all experienced here.”
Authorities said Wong, a former Army rifleman who served a year in Afghanistan in 2011-12 and returned highly decorated, went to the campus about 50 miles north of San Francisco on Friday morning, slipping into a goingaway party for some employees of The Pathway Home. He let some people leave, but kept the three.
Police said a Napa Valley sheriff ’s deputy exchanged gunshots with Wong around 10:30 a.m. but after that nothing was heard from him. From a vet center crafts building across the street from the PTSD center, witness Sandra Woodford said she saw officers with guns trained outside, but said the only shots she heard were inside Pathway early Friday. “This rapid live-fire of rounds going on, at least 12,” Woodford said.
Hours later, authorities found four bodies, including Wong.
His victims were identified as The Pathway Home Executive Director Christine Loeber, 48; Clinical Director Jennifer Golick, 42; and Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 32, a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. A family friend told The Associated Press that Gonzales was seven months pregnant.
“These brave women were accomplished professionals who dedicated their careers to serving our nation’s veterans, working closely with those in the greatest need of attention after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan,” The Pathway Home said in a statement.
Wong always wanted to join the Army and serve his country and was “soft-spoken and calm,” said Cissy Sherr, who was Wong’s legal guardian when he was a child.
Sherr and her husband became Wong’s guardians after his father died and his mother developed health problems, she said. He moved back in with them for a little while in 2013 after he returned from his deployment in Afghanistan and kept in touch online.
“He always had a great smile on his face,” she said. “He didn’t have a traditional upbringing but still he just became a fine young man. I can’t imagine what happened. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Wong wanted to go back to school to study computers and business and thought the Pathway House program would help him readjust after the Army, she said.
Dunbar, a member of The Pathway Home’s board of directors, said the program has served over 450 veterans in more than a decade. Six members are currently in the nonprofit men’s residential recovery program for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who suffer from PTSD or traumatic brain injuries, he said.
The program is housed at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in the Napa Valley wine country region. The largest veterans home in the nation cares for about 1,000 elderly and disabled vets.
Golick’s father-in-law, Mike Golick, said in an interview she had recently expelled Wong from the program. After Wong entered the building, Golick called her husband to say she had been taken hostage by the former soldier, her father-in-law said.
He didn’t hear from his wife again.
Marjorie Morrison, the founder of a nonprofit organization known as PsychArmor, recalled Gonzales Shushereba as a “brilliant” talent who did amazing work with veterans with PTSD, and also focused on helping college campuses successfully reintegrate veterans when they return to school.
Dunbar said all three of the women were excellent at what they did, and will be sorely missed. He added that veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come home with “a lot of need for special care.”