Party centre turns into scene of carnage
With the quintessential party song “Celebration” blaring, a semicircle of men and women of various ages hold hands from wheelchair to wheelchair, grooving to Kool & the Gang’s irrepressible beat. The buoyant scene from Tuesday’s Christmas party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino stands in stark contrast to scenes Wednesday as it became ground zero for a horrific mass shooting.
It seems a bewildering site for a shooting rampage — 14 people were reported killed — but in an era where schools, hospitals and churches are targeted, good cheer and service offer no protection.
The victims may have been attending another Christmas party — for county employees — in a room rented inside the centre, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The facilities were frequently crowded with clients, staff and others.
For more than 40 years the state-run, non-profit centre near the Santa Ana River that splits the city of 215,000 in two provided services to 31,000 people with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, making it the largest such facility in California.
San Bernardino is 90 kilometres directly east of Los Angeles.
“Our core values of independence, inclusion and empowerment are the foundation that drives all staff in interactions, provisions of services, and program planning processes,” says the centre’s website, accessible now only through cached digital copies as it was shut down for “security reasons” as the shooting unfolded.
The centre was state-run and funded under an act passed in 1969 after a campaign by parents of children with developmental disabilities concerned with overcrowding and service options of the day.
The centre was founded in 1972. It started with 116 clients, nine staff and a $199,000 budget. The most recent statistics from the centre said it had nearly 670 staff and more than 30,000 clients.
It moved to its current headquarters in 1996.
Funding to the centres has been cut in recent years.
The centre ran an active social calendar, including a Holiday Boutique planned for Thursday and a Winter Dance for those over 16.
The day before the shooting was a vibrant Christmas party for clients, including a visit from Santa documented on the centre’s social media sites.
A large private function using one of the centre’s halls as an external renter was decorated for a Christmas party at the time of the shooting, and may have been the focus of the attack, according to local reports.